


Everywhere I Go

by unicornwarrior



Category: Hollywood Undead (Band)
Genre: F/M, Hate to Love, Love/Hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 60,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22789390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornwarrior/pseuds/unicornwarrior
Summary: "You can't be serious."The words that have become my mantra recently. Really, my life feels like a big bad joke right now. Being shipped across the entire continent to the West Coast, being forced to live in my brother's dump of an apartment. With his stupid friends coming over all the time. And treating me like a weird little child.Ugh.~This is the story of Jade Ragan and Jorel Decker, two people who couldn't have been any more different. It's a story of heartbreak, heartache and, most importantly, of coming home.
Relationships: Jorel Decker | J-Dog/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 8





	1. You Can't Be Serious

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! 
> 
> I'm back! In the bandom! I know; it's crazy. Soooooo, about this story. 
> 
> Some may recognise Everywhere I Go as something that existed on fanfiction sites a couple of years ago, long before I left the bandom. I initially took it down last year, mainly because there were some elements of it that I no longer felt comfortable having on the internet. I know that you probably didn't come here to read my musings, so I promise I'll make it quick, I just need to say a few things before we can get into the story things. 
> 
> Hollywood Undead was my favourite band for a long, long time when I was growing up. I still appreciate their music sometimes, but I do have to say that some of their lyrics and attitudes aren't...very much in line with what I believe in anymore. Especially the way that they talk about women or LGBT+ people kind of bothers me at this point (especially their use of the f-word (not fuck, but the really really bad one) in some of their earlier songs appalls me tbh), but I've come to realise that things aren't usually that black-and-white. J-Dog actually gave an interview on Lead Singer Syndrome (I HIGHLY recomment you listen to it, it's very interesting) in which he talked about this topic, saying that it was kind of normal for the scene during the time they rose to fame to use such language. 
> 
> Still, I took down my story because it was very much integrated into a belief system that I just can't promote anymore. Slut-shaming, belittling women or using homophobic slurs - that's just not acceptable to me. But still, someone told me that they really enjoyed this story and that made me think of the time when I was still part of the bandom and so I kind of took out the more problematic aspects of this story and decided to reupload it - it's still not perfect, but what is? 
> 
> So, I'm really sorry for this very long-winded into. I just felt the need to say these things before reposting the story. I really hope that I didn't annoy you too much with my ramblings, and please don't think that I'm trying to shove my beliefs down anyone's throat, but many experiences that I've made in the past few years have made me reassess a lot of my values. 
> 
> So. Finally. Without further ado. Here it is: Everywhere I Go, the new version, without some of the more problematic aspects but basically the same story! I really hope you enjoy it :) 
> 
> Love,  
> M

“You can’t be serious.” 

Throughout the past week, I had repeated this phrase like a mantra, over and over again, so often that the words seemed to have shed their meaning entirely. Now, it was merely a loose string of words that sort of just burst out of me at any inopportune moment. 

“You can’t be _serious_ ,” I hissed, furiously jiggling the plug of my headphones in hopes of regaining the usage of my left earbud. No such luck, though. 

The voluminous businessman to my left turned to give me an odd look as I kept fiddling with the cable desperately. I looked at him with a furious scowl, which he finally interpreted as a friendly reminder that staring was actually pretty rude and returned his attention to the pompous-looking newspaper he had sprawled out all over his knees. Some of the pages had slipped onto my lap, and if the man thought I was going to let him get away with this, he was in for a real treat. 

I normally wasn’t this passive-aggressive toward strangers (on good days), but today was an exception in every sense of the word. Even the weather outside had decided to go along with my utterly rotten mood and had quickly turned the sky into a lumpy gray mass the second that I had left my room that morning. The state of New Jersey wasn’t usually that moody when it came to weather, but right now it was the worst kind of moody – which could never be a good sign. 

However, the weather in New Jersey was not going to bother me much longer for I was presented with the sunny prospect of moving to Los Angeles: ‘Spending a little time with your brother,’ my grandmother had said with a smile, like she was doing me a fucking favor. 

‘Spending a little time with my brother’ had, of course, quickly turned into ‘hey, why don’t you apply for high school over there, there’s a public one near his house’ and finally into ‘you’ll stay with him until you graduate’. 

So that was that. 

My sentence was passed, and I’d never even had time to plead my case. 

Anyone other than me might’ve been overjoyed at the opportunity to move across the country to the City of Angels and live in their long-lost brother’s bachelor’s pad – but the price I had had to pay in order for this to happen had yet to be proven worth it. I still didn’t quite understand what my grandmother was trying to achieve by sending me to live in one of the shadiest parts of Hollywood, but at least she wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. I was, frankly, slightly bitter towards her at the moment, even though the smaller, more rational part of my head told me that this was her way of trying to make me happy. Nevertheless, her latest attempt to achieve that had been rather clumsy. 

But hey – perhaps it would turn out to be a good idea for me to bond with my brother after not having seen him for just over nine years, though I still wished for it to have been under different circumstances. 

“Boarding complete.” 

The words echoed around my head like a death sentence. I eventually leaned my head back in the seat, trying to shut out the bustling noise around me without the aid of headphones, as mine had so rudely broken mere minutes ago, even though I knew that it was a lost cause from the beginning. The businessman to my right was still reading his pompous newspaper which kept crackling with every gust of air that passed it; the heavily perfumed lady to my left was still refusing to hang up the phone, even with all the dirty looks every single passenger was shooting her. Finally, however, the flight attendants succeeded in forcing her to end her inexplicably important conversation so the plane could roll into motion. I felt the familiar pull in my gut as we were detached from the safe ground and plunged into masses of cold, rainy air.

-

I awoke with a start as the plane began to rapidly lose altitude. Luckily, the lack of music filling my ears had not stopped me from dozing off the second we had reached the desired height in the sky, and I had slept for the better part of the six-hour flight until we were supposed to touch ground in mere minutes. I was pleasantly surprised by that; seeing as sleeping had proven difficult over the course of the last month.

Judging by the impatient expression that my corpulent neighbor (I was running out of non-asshole-ish ways of calling him big, to be honest – no offence to heavy-set people, it was just a little difficult to spend the flight crushed against my armrest) was sporting, I figured that we had suffered a serious delay due to the bad weather conditions back in New York. I refrained from telling him that if he was getting on a plane at JFK (because flights from Newark were too expensive, Grandma had said – I called bullshit, but I had not been up for another argument), it was an absolute miracle if he even got to depart somewhere near the scheduled time. He looked European enough not to know things like that. 

The gut-erupting feeling of landing sent tremors through my bones for a good minute, until we finally rolled into the gate at LAX. When I looked outside, I saw nothing but a perfect blue sky, fluffy white clouds barely covering the edges of a glaring sun that shone brightly and uninhibitedly. These facts inevitably did nothing, and I mean absolutely _nothing_ to soothe my godawful mood. 

When the flight attendant welcomed us to the city of Los Angeles (why was she doing that? – had she not just arrived together with us?), I started digging through my bag until I found my phone, which I immediately switched on. I had one missed call from Grandma and a text from Sara, a hollow seven-character message telling me to ‘be safe’. Val was still not replying to any of my calls or texts. 

I didn’t want to call Grandma back right away, considering I was still fairly pissed at her, so I decided to ring George first – which turned out to be a good decision seconds later. 

“Huh?” asked a sleepy voice after what felt like the millionth dial tone. My brother sounded like smoke and hangovers. 

“George?” I said impatiently, wasting no time on a greeting. Oh and there I was, so worried about him having to wait for me due to the delayed flight. 

“Oh, Jade! Hey!” he suddenly exclaimed, although I could hear that the hangover-induced headache was making him wince at the increased loudness. 

“When are you flying in?” 

I gritted my teeth. “Today,” I barked after a few seconds of seething silently. “I’m calling to tell you that I’m at LAX.” My voice sounded so venomous that there was a possibility I was killing every living insect in my immediate vicinity. 

“Shit, what?” All the sleepiness had disappeared completely; he now sounded harried and nervous. This was just a great way to start this off, wasn’t it? 

“It’s the twenty-third, George,” I snapped. _Fucking drunk-ass._

“Fuck, shit, I thought it was the twenty-second,” he cursed. I heard a pang in the background that vaguely sounded like someone stubbing their toe on a very firm object, possibly a doorframe. “Shit.” 

“Text me the address, I’ll take a cab,” I pressed through clenched teeth. This was just typical, wasn’t it? He hadn’t seen me in nine years and all this useless bastard does is get drunk the night before my arrival and sleep in the next day. 

“No!” he exclaimed, causing me to momentarily jerk the phone away from my ear. There was a ringing in my eardrum, but I drew my hand back reluctantly. “I mean, I’ll come pick you up. Forty-five minutes, tops!” 

After that, the line went dead, leaving me alone with the sweaty businessman and a most sour expression on my face. Where was the justice in all this? 

Of course, LAX didn’t feel like extending a bridge for just any other economy class flight, so I and the rest of the passengers were swiftly crammed into two buses. The second I walked out of the plane, I started wishing for New Jersey’s moody weather: California was unfamiliarly hot, and not the fun kind of hot either. The heat was smoldering and rather dry, making my throat itch and coating my forehead in a thin sheen of sweat.  
I was, quite possibly, as pissed off as I could ever be. 

Therefore, I figured that now was as good a time as ever to return my grandmother’s call – if only so she would know how miserable she was making me with this stupid idea of having me ‘bond’ with my brother; my brother who could not even be bothered to check the date on his phone in order to make sure he had not stood up his sister, in an unfamiliar city, in a state that was miles upon miles away from her home. 

As soon as she picked up the phone with a warm “Hello, sweetie”, however, my cruel intentions were wiped away completely. 

“Hey, Grandma,” I replied. “Sorry I didn’t call back any earlier, the flight was delayed ‘cause of the shit weather in New York.” I hated myself for never being able to stay mad at her. I just hated myself. But then again, if I had gone off at my poor grandma who only really wanted what was best for me, I’d probably hate myself even more. And rightfully so. 

“Language, Jade, honey,” she tutted, even though we both knew she didn’t mean it. Her soft tone brought an unwanted, sad smile to my face. 

“Sorry.” 

“It’s okay. Are you with your brother?” 

My jaw tightened. “No. I’m still on my way to the door, I’ll see him in a couple minutes.” 

“Well then, give him my love. Call me when you get to his place, okay, sweetheart?” 

“Of course.” I could feel my lower lip starting to tremble. “I already miss you, Grandma.” 

“I miss you too, Jade. But it’s important that you and George stick together in times like these. I know you’re still mad at me for sending you away, but you’ll thank me one day.” She paused for a second. “I love you, Jade.” 

“I love you too, Grandma.” 

The line went dead after that. I felt unshed tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, but my pure stubbornness kept them from spilling over. I was not going to let this ruin me.

-

The luggage conveyer belt was moving slowly, like it couldn’t really be fucked to do its job properly. I had plenty of time to stand there and ponder on my unwillingness to see my lovely brother and his friends until my suitcase came trudging along. I lifted it quickly, straining my arm muscles to heave it over the ledge and immediately dropping the case, inevitably hitting my toes in the process of doing so.

“ _Fuck_ ,” I swore, earning a few dirty looks from innocent bystanders. Grabbing the strap of my bag and throwing it across my shoulder, I started stomping across the Arrival Hall, dragging the stupidly heavy suitcase behind me, and planted myself on a seat near the doors so I would be able to see George coming in. Soon, my eyes closed on their own accord and I fell into the odd kind of half-slumber that happens when you’re transcendentally tired and simultaneously in a very loud place. 

I felt myself being shaken awake some time later, rough hands grabbing at my shoulders and pushing at my collarbones painfully with the force of someone who didn’t know just how to touch a girl properly, without impure intentions. 

“Jade?” asked a deep voice; rough to fit the hands of its owner. 

My eyes flew open and I saw a man standing in front of me. He was tall and broad-shouldered, tattoos running up and down his arms and even adorning parts of his throat. There was a dermal piercing near his left nostril – disgusting, I thought with a sigh – and a backwards cap holding his dark hair. The man was wearing baggy jeans and a sagging t-shirt that only accentuated his strong arms and toned chest along with the small potbelly he was sporting. He looked to be about twenty-three, maybe twenty-four if it hadn’t been for the glint in his eye that made him seem just that much older. 

“George,” I said stiffly. Trust me, I had known he had changed drastically – Grandma had told me that much – but this was something more than simple change. I remembered my brother as the tiny fourteen-year-old boy with his ripped jeans and blue puppy eyes, the one who would listen to Nine Inch Nails on full blast for days on end and only turn it down if I was the one asking him to; the one who had held me during the thunderstorms I feared so much; the one who had dropped everything, including me, to move to Los Angeles. 

It was obvious that he had no idea what to do, but neither did I, so we simply spent the next few moments staring at each other, noting all the small differences that the years had created. Time and alcohol had taken their toll on my brother; he looked absolutely rancid. 

Eventually, George broke the stupor by stepping forward and wrapping his thick arms around me, hugging me to his bulky body. I let him, if only so I would not destroy our relationship before it had even started, even though I had little to no faith in him. The hug was awkward and lasted too long, but when we broke apart, George looked like he felt a lot better. That made at least one of us. 

“You’ve grown so much,” he whispered, eyes widened in awe. 

“Well,” I replied impatiently, “That usually happens when you don’t see someone for nine years. They grow.” I was almost shocked at how passive-aggressive I sounded, and then I remembered that I had been forced to come here, forced to move in with my brother. So I was allowed to be angry, at least in my opinion. 

George was robbed of his answer by a burst of laughter erupting from someone stood quite near us. The person laughing was obviously a psychopath, since it didn’t seem like the most normal thing to randomly interfere in other people’s conversations. 

“That’s your sister for sure, man,” said the uninvited laugher. It did appear that this was some kind of friend to George. Well, I was in for one hell of a ride, wasn’t I? 

“Fuck you, Terrell,” said my brother almost reflexively, only to slap a hand over his mouth with an almost comically guilt-ridden expression. 

“Sorry, Jade,” he said. 

I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t worry, I don’t know what that words means anyway. People in the suburbs still only say ‘gosh-darn’ when they don’t like something.” 

Without further ado, I bent down to pick up my luggage and started making my way toward what I presumed was the exit, leaving a dumbfounded George and his snickering friend behind. However, the two of them quickly caught up and George immediately reached out to take my suitcase, but I jerked my hand out of his reach. 

“I’ve been carrying my weight for nine years, I can do it for a couple more minutes,” I snapped. 

Maybe I was being a little overly cruel to him, admittedly – but this was all too much for me. I had been disappointed by my own brother so many times that I now had lost all willingness to make friends with him; all I was going to do was sit through a couple months of Los Angeles bullshit and then apply to a college far, far away, hopefully earning myself a full ride along the way. 

“Jade, this is Jordon,” said George finally, just as we were passing through the glass sliding doors. I was once again almost knocked over by the suffocating Californian heat, but pulled myself together before giving George’s friend a curt nod. He was considerably shorter than my brother and had a rather round babyface, with wide eyes and curly hair that was tucked under a douchey-looking snapback. I took an instant dislike to his shit-eating grin and wandering eyes. 

“My face is up here, buddy,” I snarled, pointing upwards. He jerked his gaze back from where he had been shamelessly staring at the tiny bit of cleavage that my old, faded t-shirt exposed. 

“Terrell!” my brother barked, causing me to roll my eyes. Great. He was already getting started on the fucking ‘overprotective brother’-act – just what I needed most at the moment. “Not only is my sister jailbait, she’s also my sister,” he hissed. 

I rolled my eyes again. This was starting to become a bad habit of mine; I just hoped that I wouldn’t do it to the extent of my eyeballs falling out and shattering into a thousand bloody shreds. Although that would spare me the sight of George’s friend adjusting himself in his jeans as he kept checking me out shamelessly. Yay; don’t we just love rampant sexism? 

“So, Jade, how have you been?” asked George finally, as we reached the parking lot where his friend (whose name I had already forgotten) was searching the rows of cars with his eyes, obviously looking for the one he owned. 

“Okay, I guess,” I replied neutrally. I didn’t return the pointless nicety because I knew there was no point. Even George would soon figure out that there was no way I was going to enjoy my stay in this goddamn city with his disgusting friends and his…disappointing self, so he would leave me alone. Hopefully. 

“Our grandmother told me you were in a band back in the suburbs,” he stated. This guy was just not giving up, was he? 

I simply nodded as I didn’t feel the need to elaborate further. A band that no longer existed was as good as a band that had never existed at all, at least in my eyes. 

“Shit, man, chicks in bands are fuckin’ _hot_ ,” said George’s friend. I shot him an acidic glare, which he replied to with a simple wink. I pushed my sunglasses further up my nose, purposely flashing my middle finger in his direction. We finally stopped walking in front of a beat-up Ford Fiesta whose windows looked like they were being supported by duct tape and whose seats gave the impression that if I were to shine black light on them, they would light up like Christmas trees. 

Lovely. 

I vindictively slammed my suitcase into the trunk that George had opened for me and wordlessly planted myself in the backseat, stuffing in my earbuds as an alibi and leaning against the smooth, cool window. 

The drive to Hollywood took about an hour and a half since it was nearing rush hour; therefore, I had enough time to reflect on all the errors I must have committed in my past lives in order to deserve this shit-show. George and Jordon (right, that was the guy’s name) were talking in hushed voices like they were trying not to capture my attention, so I left them be and focused on the shapes rushing past the window. 

Los Angeles was, compared to the New Jerseyan suburbs, an exceptionally ugly city – or at least so I thought. It somehow managed to be both dirtier than Brooklyn and more expensive-looking than Manhattan, which was impressive in itself, and milling about were masses of rather strange-looking individuals and Hawaiian-shirted tourists. The setting seemed to change from corner to corner: One street was filled with souvenir shops and overpriced restaurants while the next one was littered with gang signs and shady-looking clubs. By the time we reached Hollywood, I was considering simply getting out of the car and taking the next flight back to NYC, but I knew that there was no chance my grandmother would let me get away with that. 

The City of Angels looked like a world where dreams became nightmares rather than reality, the American Tragedy rather than the American Dream.


	2. It's So Nice to Meet You, Let's Never Meet Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!   
> Title is taken from "We Don't Have to Dance" by Andy Black  
> You know what's funny? Reuploading this story is making me listen to all kinds of awesome music again; stuff that I'd basically forgotten about. I also just remembered that I'll be seeing HU live for the second time next week along with Papa Roach - the Year of Emo has begun and I'm digging it. 
> 
> Love,   
> M

Eventually, the shitty car halted in front of an apartment building. I looked so shady that I felt like I was going to get all kinds of diseases from simply touching the doorknob - it was for that reason only that I let George open the door for me and point me to the right stairwell. It took about five minutes to heave my masses of luggage up to the seventh floor due to the absence of a (functioning) elevator but, as Jordon pointed out, at least one was halfway safe from robberies up there because thugs usually only made it to the third, maximum fifth one. I felt reassured already. 

George unlocked the door and revealed what looked like the Ultimate Bachelor’s Pad – capitalized, because it was a concept rather than a descriptor. Beer cans and empty pizza cartons were littered about carelessly (I even spotted a few discarded condom wrappers and almost threw up in my mouth), assembled in a half-circle around what seemed to be the epicenter: an old, worn-out leather couch. A prehistoric TV was perched on a table that looked like it was about to buckle while the corner to right was entirely taken up by a small kitchenette, including a breakfast bar and a ‘dining table’ (meaning a surface to store even more trash) with the most random imaginable assortment of chairs. There were seven of them, which seemed like an unnecessarily high number of seats for a place of a size this underwhelming, and they were mismatched, some of them bright red plastic chairs and some of them solid-looking IKEA products. To our right, next to the very edge of the counter, a door led into what I presumed to be the bathroom, while two more doors situated on the left side suggested the existence of multiple bedrooms. 

“I’m sorry about this place,” said George, sounding more than just a little sheepish. “I was going to clean up but I overslept and Jay wouldn’t wake me up…” 

I didn’t have time to inquire about the ominous ‘Jay’-character was when the door to one of the bedrooms slammed open and revealed a girl.   
And a girl she was; at least physically, there was really no doubt about it. She was wearing very few articles of clothing, along with thigh-high boots. Her makeup was smeared and her blond hair fell over her shoulders in a tangled manner. She looked like the reincarnation of the aforementioned American Tragedy with her panda-like eyes and scanty skirt. I’m appalled – not at the way she was dressed, that was really none of my business, but rather at the look in her eye. 

“I’m sorry, I was just looking for Jay…,” said the girl in a small voice. She looked too young to sound that defeated. She was probably around my age, which. Okay, on the risk of sounding like an overbearing patriarch: These clothes weren’t really appropriate for her age. I know, please don’t say it. 

“He’s not here if he wasn’t with you, sorry,” replied Jordon. His voice was surprisingly sympathetic considering that he was, well, in lack of better words, kind of a dick. Still, he wasn’t looking at the girl in an odd way, he wasn’t letting his eyes wander. For a second, I almost felt like Jordon wasn’t so bad. 

However, I had now taken an instant, rather ardent dislike to this ‘Jay’ character everyone kept talking about. The girl standing in front of us looked genuinely uncomfortable here and overall unwilling to talk to a bunch of strangers who were just as awkward about this as she was. 

Don’t get me wrong; if she and him wanted to have a fully consensual one-night-stand, far be it from me to judge – but there was just a rather cruel quality about the way she had been humiliated by him; left to feel used and dirty and having to deal with her lover’s shitty friends. 

I was just praying that this ‘Jay’ character was not the roommate George had talked about having when he and my grandmother had sealed my fate via phone. 

“Could you, uhm…” The girl sniffled slightly, like she was about to cry. “Could you maybe give me the number of a cab company or something?” Her eyes were wide and sad as she looked at the three of us like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck. 

“Sure, wait, I’ll give them a call,” said George, excusing himself and leaving the room with his phone in his hand, which left me alone with Jordon and the girl, who was now looking at the floor with tired eyes. Jordon seemed rather unfazed by the current situation and was now making his way across the fields of trash over to the couch where he plopped down, whipping out his sidekick and starting to type out a text message. 

Awkward silence filled the room, leaving me to bite the inside of my cheek while contemplating my next move. Walk away? Leave the girl to her fate? Help her? Look for this ‘Jay’ guy and punch him in the dick? Punch Jordon instead, because he looked like I could actually take him in a fight? 

“Are you okay?” I finally blurted out. 

The girl’s head jerked upwards and her gaze reluctantly met mine. 

“Sure,” she said softly, in a way which let it be known that she was about as far away from ‘okay’ as anyone would get. 

“Do you wanna borrow some clothes?” I asked. 

Her brow furrowed for a few seconds until she gave a small nod. 

“That’d be really nice.” She smiled weakly, eyes watery and sad. “I don’t think my folks will be too stoked if I turn up looking like this,” she said in a sudden burst of confidence. The lazy lilt in her voice seemed fake, like she was trying to put on a show to appear tougher than she really was. 

I raised my eyebrows, but didn’t say anything, merely went to dig through my suitcase in search of some kind of sweatshirt that I wouldn’t need anymore, along with some jeans I hadn’t even really wanted to bring. Grandma would send me the rest of my stuff via mail anyway; so it would only take two weeks tops for me to have a full closet anyway. (If I would even have a closet in this fucking dump.) 

The girl gratefully accepted the items of clothing and made her way into the room I had earlier assumed to be the bathroom, leaving me and Jordon in a thick, awkward silence yet again – until a key started jiggling in the lock and the door flew open again, revealing George and another guy I didn’t recognize. 

The stranger was approximately two inches shorter than my brother and a lot less bulky; although he did seem to have somewhat defined arms and a toned upper body. His earlobes were stretched with circular gauges and a fairly random-looking assortment of tattoos was running up and down his arms. He was wearing a combination of baggy jeans and a t-shirt quite similar to George, the only difference being that he simply pulled it off way better. Whoever this was – he was stunningly hot. His eyes were of an odd green-brown color that seemed to reflect the light while his plump lips were curled into what seemed like a bored scowl (which sounded ridiculous in my head, although that was exactly what it was). 

The guy was hot _and_ absolutely charmless. 

“Jade,” said George. His expression was tight and slightly stressed, and I immediately knew who the intruder was. “This is Jorel, my roommate. And, well, your roommate, now.” 

I looked Jorel over once again, only to find that, even though he might have been stunningly attractive, he also had a ‘fucking asshole’-vibe about him like an invisible aura. What kind of name was Jorel, anyway? Was that some kind of Superman reference? Well, if so, his parents were a) grade A nerds and b) idiots – why name their kid after Jor-El out of all people? The guy was the lamest character ever. 

“Jay, this is my sister, Jade,” said George finally. 

My gaze snapped back up only to find Jorel glaring at me with a force I had never been glared at with before. He looked like he wanted to pounce on me – and definitely not in a fun way. 

“Fucking hell,” muttered Jorel, and started wordlessly making his way over to the door the girl had emerged from mere minutes prior to his grand entrance. 

Of course, said girl chose that exact moment to slam open the bathroom door and step out with her hair tied back into a ponytail, wearing my clothes and having washed off most of her ruined makeup. When she stepped into the room, everything went silent for a second, as if someone had pressed pause on a film. Jorel was staring at the girl, she was staring at him, George was staring at me, I was staring at Jorel and Jordon was simply sitting there, snickering because of a funny text he had just received. 

“The fuck is _she_ still doing here?” snarled Jorel. His voice was deep and rough, like he had been smoking for a long time and despite having quit at some point, still had gotten stuck with the awful cracks in his voice the prolonged abuse had caused. 

Even though I couldn’t help noticing these small things about him (and finding them quite attractive, as I noted with slight aggravation), the words leaving his lips still sent me into a state of boiling rage. Who did that asshole think he was, anyway? 

“’She’ was asking for a cab company’s number because you couldn’t be bothered to be around when she woke up, you piece of shit,” I blew up at him. I didn’t actually know what had happened, I just took a wild guess – and judging from the darkening frown on her face, I had hit the bull’s eye. 

“And you know that ‘cause you’ve been here for two whole minutes?” he retorted sourly. There was a lazy sound to his voice, like he couldn’t quite be bothered – I almost punched him right then and there. 

“No, I know that ‘cause I know horn-dog fucknuckles like you.” 

“You little prissy bitch, you think you’re so much better than me-“

“Hey!” exclaimed George suddenly. He was pinching the bridge of his nose like he was trying and failing to evade the rise of an oncoming migraine, squeezing his eyes shut for a few heartbeats, until he stepped forward between me and his roommate to give me a disappointed look and shove Jorel sharply. 

“What the hell is the matter with you two? You’ve known each other for maybe a minute and already you’re at each other’s throats?” He squared his shoulders, looking at Jordon for reassurance, which he got in the form of a small smile. “Jay, we talked about this.” He threw his roommate a pointed glare, which Jorel didn’t even deem worthy of a verbal reply. “And Jade, I get that you’re exhausted from an entire day spent on an airplane, but could you maybe lay off my friends?” 

“I think I’m gonna go now,” announced the girl who was still awkwardly hovering by the doorway. “I’ll bring you your clothes sometime soon.” I gave her a curt nod to show that I had understood her, and finally the slam of the door rang through the entire apartment. 

Silence fell upon the four of us for a very long moment, until George spoke up again. 

“It’s been a long day. I’ll give you the tour and let you get settled in, Jade.” 

I nodded wordlessly. 

Jorel simply rolled his eyes and followed the girl out the door, muttering something about a friend he was going to go out with. George robotically explained that he had cleared out his room for me and showed me how to work the sink and the shower before saying that he was going to pick up dinner for us, leaving me alone with a still-slightly-hung-over Jordon. 

It took me a few minutes of mulling it over until I realized that George would now have to sleep on the couch as I had not seen a third bedroom anywhere – which stirred up an odd assortment of emotions in my stomach. It was mostly guilt, to be honest. 

Maybe I was being a little harsh on him? 

I didn’t really let myself think about it as I threw shirt after shirt, hoodie after hoodie into the drawers that my brother had emptied out for me. In the back of my head, I knew that I was being uncharacteristically cruel but the idea of changing my comportment seemed like an awfully long shot for my nearsighted mind, especially if you took into account the ever-present grudge I had been holding against my brother for the last nine years. He had left me when I had needed him, solely because he had not wanted to stay in the boring suburbs – because our mother had tempted him with the fame and fortune of Los Angeles. It just sucked that they had earned neither of which, instead she had gambled away all her money and inevitably drank herself to death. Which was ironically the same path George was going down right now; then again, far be it from me to judge what my brother was doing. He was older, after all. Nearing twenty-four. 

When I had finished unpacking my suitcase, I eventually sank down on the bed, fixing my gaze firmly on the wall in front of me. My phone showed three missed calls from Sara from weeks ago, none of which I felt ready to return, and one text from Val.  
‘ _goodbye_ ,’ it said simply. A single word that cut into my skin deeper than any knife ever could. I didn’t know how long I had been staring at the seven-character message when there was a timid knock on the door. 

“Jade?” exclaimed a voice that sounded like my brother’s, but in fact belonged to the asshole that had somehow taken his place in the last nine years. “There’s pizza.” 

He said it like it was some sort of peace offering when, if I remembered correctly, I was the one who had blown up at his friend and roommate. Not exactly unprompted, sure, but nevertheless had I called him a ‘horn-dog fucknuckle’, which was not something I would usually say to anyone. The feeling of paralyzing guilt washed over me again – until I remembered: I wasn’t here to make friends, I wasn’t here to be happy. I was here to graduate and then get as far away as possible from both George and my grandmother. From George because I felt that even the most robust kind of porcelain, the sort that shaped relationships among families, could not be mended after the amount of cracks ours had suffered; and from Grandma because the two of us had been disturbingly codependent after what had happened. 

It took me a few moments to make up my mind on whether I should leave George’s room (my room) at all, but I eventually cracked open the door and stepped outside on socked feet. Someone (George, presumably) had cleared all the junk off the table and even parts of the floor and now the chairs were no longer randomly splattered over the room but assembled neatly around the dining area. Steaming pizza cartons were piled in the middle of it, surrounded by mismatched plates and glasses. Gathered around the table sat Jordon, George and two other guys I didn’t recognize – oh, joy. 

Both of them seemed to fit in with the rest of the group quite well, what with the tattoos and badass baggy jeans and all that jazz. One of them had long, frizzy black hair that stuck up at odd angles, and the other one had his brown curls half shaved-off along with about three days’ worth of stubble along his jaw and chin. 

“This is Matt and Dylan,” said George, pointing at the two strangers. “Guys, this is my sister, Jade.” 

“What’s good?” said the one I presumed to be Dylan. Matt simply gave a small, awkward wave and smile. The two of them seemed nice enough, yet I still felt no overwhelming urge to be their friend. 

Therefore, I simply raised my eyebrows and took my seat on a bright red plastic chair between Jordon and my brother.

“Have any of you heard from Aron?” continued Dylan. “Dude’s been MIA for weeks.” 

“Let’s not talk about that right now,” said George, clearing his throat. “Anyway, Jade, I got you a margarita ‘cause I remember Grandma saying something about you being a vegetarian.” He handed me a box. 

“I quit being one, like, five years ago,” I replied sharply, and then immediately felt the guilt snapping at me like a rabid dog. “But it’s still really nice of you, thanks,” I added. The dog recoiled, resuming to whimpering in the corner while I tried to carry on like nothing had happened. I opened the pizza box and took a slice, placing on the plate in front of me all while throwing my brother the most apologetic smile I could muster up. I knew he was trying, I really did, but everything he did seemed so…so clumsy, so idiotically desperate. He had refused to be there nine years ago, so why should he have changed? 

“So, how’s Grandma?” asked George when we’d all started digging into our respective pizza slices. My resolution to be civil immediately went down the drain as soon as he spoke these words. 

“Splendid,” I muttered moodily. 

George furrowed his brow, my sarcasm apparently having gone undetected. “Really? Cause she didn’t sound that way on the phone-”

“No, George, really, she’s feeling _amazing_ ,” I snarled viciously, throwing the pizza slice down on my plate and causing the sauce to splatter everywhere, including my jeans. Not like I cared. “Actually, she was especially cheerful after she watched her son and his girlfriend go six feet under. You know, at the funeral a month ago? The one you didn’t come to because you had to play a show with your shitty-ass dead-end band?” I narrowed my eyes at my brother. “The funeral that’s the reason why I’ve been shipped off halfway across the country, why I’ve had to leave my friends behind, my band, my entire fucking _life_. Because my Dad is dead. Because everyone is fucking dead now, and all I have left is you.” My tone was so bitter that George’s friends lowered their heads in shame, looking at nothing but the pizzas in front of their noses. “And as if that’s not enough, now my life has to be ruined as well. I have to move to another fucking school, another fucking state, a fucking apartment that’s overflowing with testosterone and shitty five-dollar liquor. All because one fucking drunk-driver couldn’t watch the street long enough to hit someone else who was not my father. You know, the one you abandoned nine years ago along with me?” My voice had become louder gradually until I was almost yelling now. I swiftly kicked back my chair and stood up, looking down at my brother with nothing but fire in my eyes. “So yeah, Grandma is feeling grand; because she now has no one to look out for her because she decided to be selfless one more fucking time and forced me to have a heart-wrenching reunion with my long-lost brother. Well, newsflash, George,” I tightened my jaw, looking down through my lashes. “It’s not going to happen. I’ve long lost hope in seeing my brother ever again.” 

As I finished, I saw that there was something that looked like shock written onto George’s features. He looked guilt-ridden, struck with grief and anger and hurt – and I simply didn’t care. Before any more words could force their way out of my mouth, I stormed out of the room and into the bedroom, slamming the door behind me viciously.


	3. Kill Me with Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! 
> 
> Second chapter in a day, I'm on a run. It turns out that this story is really fucking long, I, like, straight up forgot how MUCH I wrote. Jesus.  
> Title is taken from "Jasey Rae" by All Time Low.  
> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Love,  
> M

I didn’t know how long I had been lying there, silently crying into the pillow. My eyes were probably red-rimmed and bloodshot, fitting perfectly with the hysterical pink that likely was staining my face, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to get up and at least walk into the bathroom to wash it all off and calm down a little – I didn’t want to risk bumping into my brother. Then again, though, there was no way I was _not_ going to bump into him at some point, now that we were sharing a tiny-ass two-bedroom apartment, so I might as well have gotten used to it sooner rather than later. 

Therefore, at about half past ten, I decided to get up and try to freshen up a little, as I would have to take a shower to wash the day of travelling off my skin anyway. 

There was, curiously enough, not a single person to be found in the living room. It took me a while to find it, but eventually I was holding a bright yellow sticky note that had been attached to the fridge. 

‘ _Pizza is in here, eat something before you go to bed. Going out with Matt, Dylan and Jordon, I’ll be back by midnight. Don’t leave the apartment. My number is on the back of the note. George_ ’

I crumpled up the note, scoffing at George’s painfully familiar loopy handwriting, threw it into the trashcan near the refrigerator and went into the bathroom to take a shower. As soon as the droplets of hot water touched my skin, I started feeling better, enjoying the steamy heat enveloping my skin and washing me clean of all the dirt I had gathered during an entire day of being cramped into a plane and then into a car and then into an apartment that felt like an insult more than anything else. I didn’t know for how long I had been standing there when I finally turned off the water and stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around me securely. For a few minutes, I simply stared at my reflection in the mirror as the steam slowly cleared off and finally revealed all my features. 

My eyes were still a little puffy from all the crying I had been doing a little earlier, but at least now the tear-tracks were no longer visible. There were dark bags under my eyes which suggested that I really had not slept as much as I had wanted to in the past couple weeks. Other than that, I simply looked dull and lifeless. My brown hair was hanging loosely around my shoulders, but it was drained of all color and now simply depressing to look at, mousey and seemingly greying a little. I made a mental note to buy some hair dye in the course of the next week and try to pep it up a little, even though I knew that artificial enhancement could only go so far when I was simply exhausted to the bones. 

What was I going to do now? I would start at the local urban high school the day after tomorrow, but what then? I would graduate, hopefully. I would turn eighteen in a week or so. Shit, in a week? Time sure passed when you were grieving the loss of your one remaining parent and the poor excuse for a mother figure they had dragged along five years prior. But what then? What would I do when I had graduated? Try to apply for a full ride scholarship and get away from both George and my Grandma? I knew I always told myself that that was my plan; but would I really go through with it? Was it the best idea for me to simply carry on without taking a break and letting myself cope with the awful things that had happened in the past months? 

All these questions were making my head spin, so I finally just brushed my teeth and walked over into George’s room (my room) to put on some PJs and go to bed. 

I slept horribly that night. Nightmares shook me awake countless times; keeping me from enjoying the peace and quiet that had enveloped me now that George had gone out with his friends. When the clock struck one (‘be home by midnight’ my ass), I heard the front door of the apartment being unlocked and a group of people walking in. 

“Shhhhhhh,” a voice said, smoky and deep and so obviously drunk, “my sis is sleeping.” 

“Yeah, she’ll sure need her energy to bitch at you some more tomorrow.” I had heard the voice before, I was sure, but I could not place it in my brother’s group of LA gangster friends. Probably because I had already forgotten all their names and faces. 

“Don’t be a fuckin’ asshole, Matt,” said George, “our Dad jus’ died an’…an’ now she’s to move to a shitty apartment wi’ me ‘n’ Jay, of all mo’rfuckers in LA.” He chuckled. “Cut ‘er some slack.” 

“You’re such a sissy!” said Matt with a giggle. 

“Shut up and go to sleep, Kurlzz,” said my brother, and then everything went silent. Well, I thought it did, until I could hear the door to the room I was sleeping in being cracked open. George was standing in the doorway; I could make out as much in the darkness. When he started walking over to the bed, I quickly shut my eyes, pretending I was asleep as he pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. 

“I love you, sis,” he whispered into the night, clearly thinking it would go unheard, and then he left the room to lay down on his shitty-ass couch. 

When I finally fell asleep, more tears had already dried on the pillow below me.

-

Matt, Dylan, Jordon and George were all gathered around the dining table in the small living room of the apartment. They were eating doughnuts straight out of a box and drinking obviously painfully overpriced Starbucks coffee while arguing in hushed voices – of course, all of that died down as soon as I entered.

“Good morning, Jade,” said George, giving me a weak smile. 

“Morning,” I replied quietly. I was suddenly painfully aware of the fact that I was not wearing many layers of clothing and, most importantly, that I was lacking the protection of a bra. 

“What time is it?” I asked, if only to break the silence. The four of them were all staring at me – mostly at my face, though. 

“Around one. We let you sleep in ‘cause you looked like you needed it after that long day of travelling.” George’s smile fell slightly, but he immediately gathered himself and plastered it on again. It looked fake enough for me to notice; and I had not seen him in nine years. Although one must say that George had kept most of his childhood mannerisms: He was still wiping his hands on his pants at every given opportunity, and his leg was still jiggling up and down whenever he seemed to be even slightly nervous. I guess some things never change, do they? 

“Thanks,” I replied awkwardly. 

“There’s some doughnuts left, and we got you coffee.” George smiled again, and this time it seemed a little more genuine. Like another peace offering. 

“Thanks,” I repeated. “I’ll just put on some clothes, be right back.” 

When I turned to reenter the bedroom, I heard Dylan’s deep voice behind me say, “Ay, man, are you sure she’s related to you? ‘Cause she’s fine as hell and…look at you, man.” 

I guess no one expected me to laugh at that, so I could almost hear their startled gasps when I turned around before shutting the door behind me. 

“I get my looks from our Dad,” I said, but there was no real venom behind it. I threw George a soft smile after saying it, which he returned, albeit in a quite surprised manner. 

I then closed the door behind me and finally walked over to the closet, where I pulled on a pair of jeans and a loose tank top. The sun was poking through the curtainless windows, softly warming my shoulders and neck. Now the light didn’t seem to be as threatening as the day before, it was simply comforting and nice – maybe this was a sign that I should not be this hard on George, especially not now. Perhaps it was time for our family to stick together now that there were so few of us left, and maybe I could try to make it work, if only for my grandmother’s sake. With that thought in mind, I crossed the living room again to walk into the bathroom where I quickly brushed my teeth and eventually, I sat down on one of the unoccupied chairs right between Jordon and Dylan, who both immediately started checking me out shamelessly. 

“…and then this girl, like, _jumped_ on Funny’s dick and was like ‘I’ll let you cover me in peanut butter’ and I swear, I’m not kidding-”

“Dude,” George interrupted Jordon. He didn’t say anything more, merely shared a meaningful look with his friend, which seemed to shut Jordon up quickly. 

“So, I was thinking that before you start school back up tomorrow, we could take you to the beach or something,” he continued. “I mean, it’s cool if you don’t want to, but it’s the only real sight in LA. Like, we got Hollywood and sh-stuff but you seriously don’t wanna go there, it’s either full of the undead or tourists, and neither are very fun.” 

I nodded, doing my best to give an encouraging smile. 

“The beach sounds really cool.” 

“Rad.” 

An awkward silence wrapped around the little group for a few seconds, but Jordon soon started a conversation with Dylan that seemed to entertain everyone – it started off with a story that involved their mutual friend Aron, a girl’s number and another girl’s feet; nothing I want to go into detail about. 

“Jade, can I talk to you for a second?” said George, touching my arm lightly. 

I nodded curtly and got up, following him into his (my) bedroom. 

“So, I know this is gonna sound really stupid, but we’re gonna need to lay down some ground rules before we do anything here.” 

I nodded again to show that I was following. 

“Okay, so one thing is that I don’t want you to get mixed up with the wrong crowds. Trust me, I went to the same high school you’re gonna start at tomorrow, and there’s some shady people who go there.” He exhaled sharply. “So stay away from gangs, from all these sh…crappy druggies, from fake friends. Try to lay low, people are dangerous.” I raised my eyebrows but didn’t say anything. “You don’t go out with guys if I don’t know them.” My eyebrows shot upwards further, yet I still remained silent. “I won’t stop you from dating and shit, but introduce them to me before you do anything. Other than that…no smoking. Absolutely no drinking. No drugs anywhere _near_ you. I’m responsible for everything you do, so do not get yourself in trouble.” I gritted my teeth angrily. Of course. He could smoke, he could drink, he could do anything he wanted, but not me. I felt like I was a stupid child being lectured by her mother; and all my resolutions to act civil with George were wiped away. “And absolutely no leaving the apartment at night. I’d rather you didn’t go out alone at all, to be honest, this is a pretty shady neighborhood, and until you know what streets to take and where to go, I will definitely not let you go out by yourself.” He handed me a piece of paper with a seemingly random assortment of names and numbers scribbled on it. “This is the guys’ numbers. If anything comes up, feel free to call any of them. I know you haven’t met Aron yet, but he’s a great guy and you’ll probably see him later this week.” 

I looked at him with a sour expression. 

“Is that all? Or do I have to wear turtlenecks at all times to keep myself modest as well?” I asked but thought better of it the second the words had burst out. “Sorry. Nevermind,” I added stiffly. 

George ran a hand through his hair exasperatedly. “I’m only doing this ‘cause I worry about you, Jade. This neighborhood ain’t no joke,” said George with the most serious expression I had ever seen on him. 

“Yeah,” I replied. “English grammar ‘ain’t no joke’ either, yet you choose to treat it like one.” I dropped my voice, imitating his gangster lingo and went back to my usual sharp, bitchy tone just as quickly. 

“Shit man, I’m gonna get whiplash from your moods at some point.” George seemed to forget his façade for a second, even swearing in front of me, and pinched the bridge of his noise in an annoyed manner while squeezing his eyes shut. I had learned that he had picked up this odd habit in the last nine years and was now doing it at every given opportunity. I almost felt sorry for him as he stood there, obviously desperately trying to be nice to me even though I was giving him hell right now. 

“Let’s just go, alright?” I suggested, nudging his arm lightly and giving him an apologetic smile. You probably could have cut the tension in the room with a knife as my brother stared at me for a second, eyes tired with dark bags underneath them. 

“Yeah,” he finally agreed. 

I followed him back into the living room, where he quickly got his friends to get ready. I picked up the coffee they had brought me and started carefully sipping it on our way down the stairs while everyone else was having obnoxiously loud conversations. Dylan and Jordon quickly turned out to be two of the funniest guys I had ever met. The former would constantly amuse everyone with his hilarious way of sounding like he was stoned off his face at all times and the latter was a confusing combination of an asshole, a womanizer and a teddy bear. Matt appeared to be a more quiet personality, yet he had a solid sense of humor and it didn’t seem to bother him much that Jordon took every opportunity to call him names or embarrass him in any other way, but that was probably because he spent most of his time on his phone anyway. While the three men were laughing and joking, I couldn’t help but watch my brother from the side. He was walking with certain, long strides and his shoulders were hunched – but it didn’t seem to be a posture of defensiveness or reclusiveness; with George, it merely seemed even more threatening and intimidating. I had quickly come to realize in the last twenty-four hours that my brother had turned into a personality somewhat fitting for the image of the Hollywood rapper. 

When Grandma had first told me that George, my gentle, book-loving big brother, was now in a band that focused on highly offensive rap metal music, I had been suitably dubious about the whole thing. I had still remembered him as the little fourteen-year-old who would have been sitting in his room all day, listening to Nine Inch Nails and reading John Milton novels rather than being out and making friends. George had always been a little shyer than everybody else which was definitely the reason why most people in his school in New Jersey didn’t like him much, why some even bullied him. Los Angeles had undoubtedly turned him into a much tougher person all-around, what with the masses of tattoos and shit. Yet I still felt like this George was so much more vulnerable than the one I had known all these years ago. At least my brother George had been able to talk about his feelings and openly make them known, while this George seemed more like the ‘bottling-everything-up’ kind of guy. I wasn’t sure whether I liked it much, to be honest. Whether I liked him much. And then there was still the memory of cold-hearted abandonment hanging above the two of us like a black, heavy cloud. 

“…and I swear to God, she was going nuts on my ass and I was so glad that Dylan came in, at, like, the last minute.” Jordon was speaking vividly, gesturing with his hands to the point where he almost hit Dylan in the face. “Anyway, has anyone heard from Aron? We were gonna talk about where we’re gonna record the first few demos.” 

“I didn’t know that. Hey! Uh, man, do you always have to forget about the homie Funny Man? C’mon, does anyone ever tell me anything at all?” Dylan whined. The childish nagging sounded ridiculous in combination with his baritone voice – even though I had learned during this (quite enlightening talk) that Dylan was actually the youngest of them all. He was turning nineteen in a few months, which made him almost a year older than me. Yet I still felt like we were worlds apart. 

“I talked to Jay. They posted their song on MySpace, even though it’s fucking shit and all the kids are probably gonna make fun of it in, like, ten years, but people loved it. So we’re gonna try that again with a halfway decent version of Hollywood and put it out there.” Jordon had a languorous look on his face as he spoke. 

“We’ll have to fu-frickin’ pay for a studio first then, don’t we?” said George gruffly. We had reached the front door of the apartment complex by now and as soon as we stepped out into the heated Los Angeles air, almost all of them dug out their packs of smokes and lit up. Dylan was the only one who didn’t make an attempt to, which was part of the reason why I started wordlessly walking next to him. 

“That shit’s ridiculous, though,” said Matt, “I mean, I can record the drums in a basement as well and get about the same effect if we manage to get a single clean take if someone,” he interrupted himself to give Jordon a pointed glare, “doesn’t interrupt me to yell ‘Da Kurlzz sucks dick’ into a mic.” 

“Yeah, but the vocals are gonna get tricky. It’s gonna start sounding muffled and…hey, why don’t we talk about something else for a change?” suggested Jordon. “It’s a beautiful day, we have George’s beautiful sister among us, and we finally all have a day off.” 

I gave a weak smile. “A day off from what exactly? Trying and failing to get random chicks to sleep with you and boozing in your Mom’s basements?” 

“Oh, shit,” exclaimed Dylan. He whistled, his gaze snapping from me to Jordon and back. “Charles is getting owned by a chick!” Charles? Who was – oh, right, that was one of their ridiculous excuses for a stage name.

“It’s all good, Dylan, I like ‘em feisty,” replied Jordon with a smirk. 

Against my better judgement, I started giggling along with their braying laughter. Some part of me told me that neither of them was actually serious about the things they were saying and that they wouldn’t dream of trying to hit on me – mostly because George seemed like he would have no problem ripping their arms off if they overstepped any boundaries. As long as all of this was happening in good fun, I could let myself be amused by it. Jordon and Dylan were amusing on about the same level as clumsy baby kittens. 

“I’ll have you know that we all have serious jobs!” said Jordon. Maybe puppies chasing their own tails? 

“Oh yeah? Is ‘professional asshole’ a serious job now?” I shot back with a sarcastic smile. 

“I think it is, but that’s definitely not a job for me.” He laughed like teenage girl who had just been told the most perverted joke by her friend. “Sounds painful.” 

I wrinkled my nose in disgust, even though the comment was admittedly quite funny. 

“The fuck, man?” asked Matt, who had up to now been desperately trying to tame his masses of black curls. He generally looked like he was insanely self-conscious about his hair. I didn’t blame him for it, though, because having a mop of practically untamable curls could not always be fun. 

“Matt, on the other hand, would make a fabulous professional asshole as he already takes it up there,” Jordon teased. 

Matt simply sighed, returning his attention to the glowering cigarette in his hand. It seemed quite like he was used to the continued abuse from Jordon. I almost felt sorry for him – it wasn’t like Jordon was actually a homophobe, at least I didn’t think so, but he was obviously childish enough to think that making fun of minorities was acceptable; which didn’t exactly put him in a highly esteemed position in my books. But, to be honest, it just kind of seemed like Jordon was pulling Matt's pigtails and overcompensating for his own feelings, but, you know. I wasn't an expert. 

“Just get in the car, assholes.”


	4. Ice

The car ride to the beach was surprisingly pleasant, even if you took into account that I was squished between George (who refused to let any of his ‘horndog’ friends sit near me as he already suspected that they were drawing up plans to woo me) and the window. I soon learned that the beat up Ford Fiesta belonged to Jordon and that George didn’t even own a car – which was soon forgotten when Jordon reminded me that he pretty much stayed over every night because he was still technically living with his Mom and harbored no real will to spend a lot of time with her. 

By the time we reached the ocean and all piled out of the car, my hair was matted with sweat and I was slightly bitter toward George, who kept trying to step in and censor whatever his friends were talking about because, and I quote, “she’s fu-… fricking seventeen, don’t corrupt her already’. Rather than making me feel protected, his comments achieved the exactly opposite effect. 

However, lying down on the beach and enjoying the warm beams of sunshine on my skin erased about seventy percent of my bitterness toward my brother. 

The day was thoroughly enjoyably spent joking around until, around five o’clock, a smaller argument between George and Dylan broke out. I didn’t understand what it was about as I had been busy staring at the glittering waves crashing into the shore, but I realized that something was wrong when George plopped down next to me, obviously fuming. I didn’t ask any questions about what was going on or anything, simply closed my eyes and focused on the bright lights trying to break through. 

“I’m sorry about these assholes,” he said finally. 

I reluctantly opened one eye to look at my brother. “Who?” 

“ _Them_ ,” he spat, indicating his group of friends scattered about. 

“They’re not that bad,” I replied. I wasn’t saying it simply to diffuse the situation, I honestly believed that they were okay. Sure, Dylan was kind of trying too hard to ride on the stereotypical image of a gangster, Matt was kind of a bitch about some things and Jordon was a wannabe who often overstepped all sorts of boundaries when it came to making homophobic remarks about Matt (when he very, very clearly had a gigantic crush on Matt), but other than that, they had not treated me unfairly. “Actually, they’ve been quite decent to me.” 

“Still, I’m sorry about-”

“Just fucking cut it out, George,” I said, with maybe a little too much force. “I said it was fine, didn’t?” 

“Yeah,” he replied simply, although I could hear that he was pissed. 

“Wow, being passive-aggressive: real mature, buddy,” I spat. 

“You know what? You’re one to talk!” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Nothing, fuckin’ nothing at all.” George got up, gathering his cigarettes and lighter, and walked off into the distance, practically fuming. 

“Yeah, fucking run away, like you always do! That’s definitely gonna get you somewhere!” I called after him in a fit of childish need to hurt him, if only to get a reaction. 

I was left alone and simply lay down, letting my head slam against the pile of sand at the back of my head. Everything was fucked now. It had been, from the second that my grandmother had said that it was ‘about time me and George reconnected’. There are some things you simply cannot fix – and a siblings’ relationship after nearly a decade of negligence was definitely one of these things. I didn’t know how Grandma had imagined this to end, or what she thought should have happened but we definitely weren’t going to spontaneously turn into one of these families that had dinner nights every Sunday, playing Monopoly and giving each other beautifully written letters describing what we loved about the other person for our birthdays. 

My thoughts were interrupted rather rudely by what felt like the entirety of a glacier being dropped into my thin t-shirt. It was relatively warm in California, sure, but not even in January on the West Coast, it is okay to simply drop an ice cube on someone – therefore I jerked out of my haze rapidly, my back straightening and propping myself up on my hands as I tried to recover from the shock. Through my newly opened eyes, I saw a quite disturbingly serious-looking Jordon carrying an empty glass, presumably his source of deadly ice-cube-cold. 

“What the unholy fuck, man?” I snarled at him. 

He simply shrugged. “You looked hot-headed, thought I’d help you calm down.” 

“Listen up, you tweezer-wanker –” 

“No, you listen up here, Jade,” he barked. I recoiled, looking at him with wide eyes. “I’ve known George for nine years. He became my best friend the exact day he walked into class at his new school, not knowing anyone. He was this pathetic kid who constantly carried around a picture of his sister because he missed her to death – and he’d had to leave her behind because of their mother.” 

“What?” My eyebrows were drawn together, no longer in shock but rather confusion, and I looked at him. 

“Yeah. Some things are a little hard to explain to an eight-year-old – especially if you were as lovely back then as you are now – and I think advanced cirrhosis is one of them. Especially if the cirrhosis is induced by overconsumption of alcohol. Over the course of seven years.”   
I sucked in a sharp breath. I had known that my mother was a drunk – but not that it had started this early. I had thought it had started when they had reached Los Angeles. I had not known that it had been that bad even when we had been kids. Had she been drinking whiskey before putting us to bed? Before feeding us? 

“And then George, of course, does the selfless thing, being the idiot that he is: He leaves his sister even though he loves her most in the world and goes to Los Angeles with his mother, because he swore to look out for her and protect her. Then he watches her die. For five fucking years, he watches her die. I think he was relieved when they found her dead when he was nineteen because it meant that he could finally get on with his life. Maybe move back to the fuckin’ suburbs, or at least visit his sister.” 

I gulped. 

“Which would’ve been great, but since you didn’t return any of his calls or texts or mail or _anything_ at all, he stayed. And trust me, I’m fucking overjoyed he did, because if not we would’ve probably never had this band, we would’ve never met Jay and Aron, I would’ve fucking lost my best friend – but it killed him inside. He thought he’d fucked up forever, he thought you hated him, that he’d never get to see you again.” 

A shameful blush had started creeping up on my cheeks, almost burning on my skin as it crawled upward all the way to my hairline, where it sat uncomfortably, nearly painfully. I was so ashamed that it was hard to meet Jordon’s intense blue eyes. 

“And then, bam, the next shit thing happens. His Dad dies. Have you ever thought of that? That it’s his Dad, too, not only yours? And a week later, your grandmother calls, telling him that you’ll be staying with him for a few months because she felt that you two needed to bond after such a long time of not having seen each other. Did you know that George asked your grandmother for your yearbook pictures every year? And that she went behind your back to get extra copies to send him? And that he keeps all these fucking pictures in this stupid-ass picture frame that he had to take down because he cleared out his own room for you?” 

I shook my head. Tears were starting to roll down my cheeks – I hadn’t noticed them welling over. I was once again glad that it was nearing dusk and people had started to leave the beach so we were about the only ones in a half-mile radius (save for Dylan and Matt sipping their beers a good twenty feet away, Matt pretending not to hear any of what Jordon was saying while Dylan was cracking one awkward joke after another, prompting eye-rolls and, one time, even a shove from Matt). 

“And shit, he was through the roof. He talked about it nonstop. ‘Don’t hit on my sister’ here, ‘we have to cut back on band practice’ there, ‘I need to take more night shifts’ and so forth. The night before you arrived, he was so nervous that he almost drank himself to death. Damn near fell into a coma. But of course, it doesn’t matter, because Jade is finally here, right?” 

Shame was now literally causing me physical pain, starting as a small headache and now pumping its way down into my stomach where it sat in ugly cramps. 

“And then we see you on that airport, sleeping, looking like a fucking undead person. Skinny as shit, bags under your eyes, nails bitten to the bone. And he just wants to swoop you up in his arms or some shit, force feed you love and make you better, ‘cause that’s what family does, Jade. But no, you start being a bitch. And he tries and tries again, and you shut him off. Listen, girl,” he said. His voice had started to get quieter now, mellower as if he was trying to convey that he wasn’t mad or something. Ugh. Getting a dressing-down from my brother’s weird best friend. This was shameful. “I know life has dealt you a shitty hand. I know that, and I’m sorry. I know that George has a weird way of showing that he cares, and I know that he sometimes comes on too strong, but I’m begging you, please give it a try. If not for him, do it for yourself. I can see that you love him, Jade, it’s not like I think you’re a cold, heartless bitch. But by all means, go hug your brother or some shit. Tell him about what’s been going on in the past nine years. Anything, anything that will make him better. Because shit, I’m worried about him. Doesn’t stop drinking, doesn’t cut back. He needs you, Jade, and you need him.” 

He looked so desperate, staring at me with wide eyes, all anger having faded out long time ago. 

Maybe, a small voice in the back of my head piped up, porcelain doesn’t have to be mended. Maybe, it said, it would do to try and stick it back together, making somewhat of a new masterpiece. 

“I’m sorry, Jordon,” I whispered. 

“Don’t apologize to me. You can be a bitch to me all you like – hell, I think it’s hilarious most of the time – but please go easy on your brother. I love George, he’s my best friend.” 

Then, after a moment of silence, he added with a small, broken voice, “I don’t want to lose him too.”


	5. All the Colors of the Sunset

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I'm on a roll!   
> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> Love,   
> M

Without asking for my permission, my legs struggled to get me off the ground and started walking into the direction I had seen George storm off in a few minutes earlier. As if on autopilot, I searched the empty plains of sandy beach until I spotted a dark figure standing ankle-deep in the icy water, dragging a cigarette every now and then, staring off into distance and generally looking like they were waiting for death to come and wash them away. A strong wind had picked up and was whipping around my clothes, but the scene unfolding in front of me was absolutely stunning nonetheless.

I wordlessly stood next to my brother and enjoyed the view for a few seconds. The sun was already kissing the horizon, causing the sky to explode with a stunning assortment of all the different colors of dusk. The water reflected the beautiful pattern, magnifying and stretching it so parts of the purple, pink and orange reached my toes. 

“This is amazing,” I said quietly. 

“Haven’t been here in five years,” replied George. 

I held out my hand, silently asking for a smoke, which he gave me after a few moments of spiteful hesitation. 

“One,” he said sternly, causing me to chuckle lightly. 

I lit up expertly, prompting a raised eyebrow from my brother, which I retaliated with an innocent shrug and a smirk. He simply laughed. It was a nice sound – gentle and somewhat familiar, although it definitely had not had the smoky, raspy edge to it when he had been fourteen. 

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, as the first ribbons of smoke passed my bitten lips. “For treating you like this, for bitching at you like this, for being so damn ungrateful.” 

“It’s okay,” he replied, and it sounded so sincere that I almost broke out in tears again. 

We smoked side by side in companionable silence for a few moments until I spoke up again. 

“I thought you’d left me because you didn’t care about me anymore. It’s stupid, I know – but I was eight years old and I didn’t understand that not everything was about me.” 

I saw George nod in my peripheral vision and took it as my cue to carry on. 

“I was so mad at you for abandoning me like that, so I didn’t pick up the phone. And when you stopped calling four years later, I thought that you were simply confirming my fears – that you didn’t care. I know it was stupid and childish to act that way, but I was just so mad because you got to move to Los Angeles without me while Dad and I never really got along.” 

“What about his new girlfriend?” 

“I fucking hated her. She was this young thing, and he thought that I’d accept her as a mother figure as soon as she turned up. I didn’t, though; I made her life living hell. They got together when I was about fourteen, and that was about the time I started acting up. I didn’t want Dad to replace Mom because, well, she was our _Mom_. He didn’t want me to fly in to go to her funeral; told me that you wouldn’t want to see me there anyway.” 

“That’s bullshit.” 

“I know. I think I knew back then as well, but I was mad and confused and Dad was there and you weren’t so I decided to listen to him and stay home.” 

“I missed you so bad.” George’s voice was cracking and I finally looked over to see him staring at me, his cigarette forgotten in his right hand and the left one raised, like he wanted to reach out and put it on my shoulder in a reassuring gesture but didn’t know whether I would want him to. 

I beat him to it and stepped forward, wrapping my arms around him tightly. His shoulders were almost uncomfortably broad and he towered above me, a good foot taller, but his hands were gentle when they came to wrap around me. He was running his left hand up and down my back, holding me close like he was trying to keep me from falling apart. 

“I missed you so much, little sister,” he muttered so quietly that I didn’t think I was supposed to hear it. 

“I missed you too, big brother,” I replied anyway. 

As we pulled away, I hastily pulled the ashing cigarette to my mouth and took a final drag before stubbing it out in the sand and putting the filter into my pocket to throw it away later. 

“Can we maybe start again?” I asked sheepishly. “I know I haven’t been very nice to you the past day, but I really want to try being…being just brother and sister again. I’ve been trying to tell myself that I didn’t need you but obviously, that didn’t quite work out.” 

George gave me a smile that, for the first time since I’d arrived, seemed fully genuine. 

“Of course, Jade. I’m sorry, too – I know that I come on too strong sometimes, it’s just that-”

“You care,” I interrupted. “Please don’t ever stop doing that.” 

We walked back to the guys in silence, me being unable to muster up the nerve to ask for another cigarette and George smiling to himself, perfectly content with the world right now. 

“Did you make up?” asked Jordon. 

I simply flipped him off and plopped back down on my towel. 

“Guys!” Dylan suddenly exclaimed, breaking into our midst and setting down a cooler that was obviously filled with drinks. He opened it and handed everyone a beer – except for me, I simply got a coke. 

“Are you serious?” I asked with a stony expression. 

“You’re seventeen, Jade,” said George sternly. 

I rolled my eyes at him half-good-naturedly and decided not to immediately put our newly called truce on stake. 

“To…shit, what are we toasting to?” asked Dylan. I simply rolled my eyes. 

“Your Mama,” I replied automatically. 

“You quit mouthing off, sweetie” he said, but it was all in good fun. 

“To Hollywood Undead,” said Matt finally, “Let’s hope we actually get somewhere with this shit.” 

“To George,” I added, “’cause he pretends to be some hard-ass motherfucker when we all know he’s got a big heart.” 

I gave my brother a hesitant smile, ignoring Jordon’s badly concealed cough of ‘gay!’ (Jesus, that guy was overcompensating _big time_ ) and raised my coke to clink the bottle against the others’. It was chilly and I had had to put on my jacket, making George frown and fidget. We drank together, laughing and talking for a good half hour and eventually, when our drinks were gone and the sun had almost disappeared behind the sea in the distance, we gathered all our stuff and started making our way back to the car. 

The drive back to the apartment was long since we had gone quite far to avoid the normally crowded tourist areas and tried for a more remote place. Long enough for me to doze off on George’s shoulder, reminiscing about the past 24 hours. 

I was awoken by someone carrying me bridal style through the front door to the apartment and finally setting me down on my bed. George pressed a short kiss to my forehead and walked out, softly shutting the door behind himself. 

I lay awake for some time after that. A long time, actually – so many things were running through my mind. It felt like I was running in circles again and again as I thought about what had happened in the past days. I’d been reunited with my brother, started hating him, stopped hating him, started wanting to try to actually have a better relationship with him: If that was not a dizzying array of emotions, then what was? 

The most important thought that kept me awake, however, was the fact that I was going to start at a completely new school tomorrow. I didn’t know anyone in this place and, honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to. If even fifty percent of what George had said about these kids was true, I was in for one hell of a semester; especially since I needed to get good grades in order to apply for a scholarship. 

At some point, deciding that I would need a glass of water or something, I picked myself off the bed and started walking into the living room, but I was immediately stopped by a pair of hushed voices. 

Now, I know that it’s rude to eavesdrop – but I couldn’t help it. 

“No, I won’t _just chill_ ,” said a deep, crackly voice I recognized as none other than Jorel’s. “The bitch will be here for five months flat, and I actually want to use the living room. So you either get her to share or look for a different place for her to stay, ‘cause this is not working out.” 

“Could you please keep your voice down, Jay?” replied my brother. “She’s sleeping.” 

“Oh, fucking sure, I’ll just start tiptoeing ‘round my own apartment ‘cause your bitchy little sister needs her beauty sleep before going to kindergarten tomorrow. Seems legit.” I suddenly wondered whether Jorel had ever said anything nice in his entire life. Didn’t sound like he had. “I know this family bonding bullshit is all very important to you and shit, but I need my space, dude.”

“You mean you want to bring home chicks to fuck.” 

“Well, yeah. I have needs.” Disgusting. “And I don’t really see why I should build my life around a person I don’t know or like, just ‘cause I’m living with you.” 

“As if I’ve never had to adapt!” 

“Yeah?”

“Fuck yeah!” Their voices were still not above harsh whispers, but I could hear that George was itching to raise his and yell at Jorel like his life depended on it. “What about two years ago? What about your time after coming back down?” The click of an illuminating lighter sounded through a short moment of silence. “I know it ain’t fun to be you. I know boot camp fucked you up good and, hell, I fucking know that it’s hard to be alone in Hollywood.” A breath exhaled, like smoke dissolving into air quickly. “But you’re not even twenty-one and you’re already talking like you’ve seen it all.” 

“You’re gonna get yourself in so much shit with the landlord, George,” said Jorel. He now sounded neutral, like he was simply stating facts. 

“Yeah, as if that guy gives a flying fuck.” More exhales. He was smoking his cigarette shamelessly, even though I was almost certain it was strictly forbidden to smoke inside the apartment complex – that was probably what Jorel had meant by ‘shit with the landlord’. 

“It doesn’t matter, though. Fact is, you come home drunk three nights a week, at the very least, and you fuck random chicks almost every night. I’m okay with it ‘cause I don’t mind hearing some lady moan and groan through the night, but my little sister, who’s not even eighteen yet; she probably does.” 

“I’m pretty sure that she can say so herself, you don’t have to talk in her stead.” Jorel was back to sounding taunting and mocking now. 

I felt that all we’d done that day was fight and make up, fight and make up – and I was simply so, so _tired_. My bones felt heavy and my head was aching, therefore I decided to lie back down and ignore the rest of George and Jorel’s idiotic argument about whether I minded or didn’t mind his tendency to take home women. Not that I particularly cared about what that guy did in his free time; nor did I care what the ladies did as long as what they were doing was consensual. 

I later fell into a somewhat fitful sleep, tossing and turning for hours on end until I heard a faint ringing emerge from my phone – an alarm. 

Time for high school.


	6. High Up and Way Down

Despite having been separated for nine years, George and I still shared an impressive lot of distinct character traits. For example, both of us were quite moody in the morning, especially when we had not slept much and especially especially if we had an unpleasant day ahead of us. 

Therefore, when Jorel opened the bathroom door (he was about to go to bed when I was supposed to be up) to find me brushing my teeth, wearing only a pair of shorts and a bra, I didn’t hesitate to snap at him whereas he didn’t hesitate to shamelessly check me out while walking out of the room backwards, a shit-eating grin on his face. 

“George, I think we can keep your sister!” I heard him exclaim. 

Jordon, who was currently sitting on the sofa and sipping a cup of black coffee, immediately let out a cough to cover up his intonation of, “Jailbait!” 

“Hey, whatever gets me off, right, Georgie?” Jorel sounded even more cynical now, which suggested that the fight had gone much further beyond the point of me deciding to quit eavesdropping. 

When I was done getting ready and had my schoolbag packed, George handed me a coffee mug with a sheepish smile. I took it, returning the smile with a little bit of effort and started sipping slowly as I knew it would be scalding. Instant coffee was still absolutely disgusting and I felt impelled to remind them that there were coffee machines available for purchase which didn’t cost all that much but I suddenly recalled that my brother didn’t have any savings, didn’t have much money: He was simply scraping through, having to decide every month whether to buy beer or pay the rent. Jordon and George were both sitting in the car silently as Jordon probably knew about my brother’s tendency to lash out at people – his victims   
selected at random – in the early morning. He had been like that even nine years ago, throwing hissy fits whenever our mother had dared to wake him up on the weekend. The thought of my mother still sent a stab of pain through the cuts my arrival in Los Angeles had reopened, pictures of her once so beautiful face swimming in my inner eye. I saw an image of George, standing alone at her funeral, barely nineteen and chain-smoking his way through pack after pack while our mother was being buried six foot deep. 

We pulled up in front of an ugly, gray concrete building which seemed even more unwelcoming than the rest of the city. I could see that a motivated committee of home improvers had made somewhat of an effort to improve the school’s outer appearance, yet nothing had quite helped: One can only plant so many trees in front of a concrete block without seeming a little desperate. 

Students were streaming in and out of the building, colorful dots littering the gray landscape. The parking lot in front of me was wide and filled with fundamentally different kinds of cars: One side seemed to be the poorer side, with beat-up Fords and other second-hand vehicles which looked like they had seen much better days. The other side however looked like the magical place people always wanted Hollywood to be: Sparkly new Volvos next to glittering Volkswagens; I even spotted a Porsche wedged between to silvery Jeeps. 

It was disgusting how poverty and wealth could coexist so easily, without ever rubbing off on each other. 

“Whatever you do,” said George, leaning back in his seat. He was wearing big sunglasses that covered about half his face, which implied that he had had a few glasses of whiskey before going to bed. “Don’t go near white boys with shaved heads and tattoos.” 

I simply smiled, promising to stay out of trouble, as I picked up my bag and got out the car. Surprisingly enough, George left the car as well, drawing a fair share of odd looks – apparently, this school very hardly saw huge dudes that heavily tattooed. Which, taken into consideration his previous statement, could be a good thing? 

“You have a good first day, kay?” he told me. 

He then awkwardly held up his arms and for a second, I considered teasing him but then I thought better of it and put him out of his misery, letting myself fall into his arms and hugging him tightly. 

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, bro,” I said, patting his back awkwardly. As much as I hated to admit it, it felt good to be in my brother’s arms again after all these years. George had gotten huge and scary, but I still felt protected and safe when I was with him. 

“I’ll pick you up at three,” he said. “Or I’ll get Jay to do it, we’ll see.” 

A sour expression crossed my face at the mention of George’s roommate, but I quickly wiped it away, pretending it had never even been there. 

“Thank you.” 

I gave him one last hug and waved to Jordon, who was sensibly refusing to leave the car, and then ushered them away, hoping that I had not already made myself known as the person with the overly attached big brother. 

Luckily enough, there were so many people at this school that no one really seemed to care much, so everyone simply ignored what was happening or at least had the decency to keep the shit-talking at an unnoticeable volume. 

Walking into the school turned into a task so hard that I considered simply turning around and somehow finding my way back to George’s apartment where I’d make up some sort of lie for why I couldn’t possibly continue going to this school. However, I managed to find the main entrance and pushed through the masses of sweaty bodies. The outside of the building seemed so threatening with its prison-like character – built of concrete, windows like small, angular holes in the walls, doors like steel portals – and the inside didn’t look much better: Dingy linoleum floors were being shone upon by fluorescent ceiling lamps with a tendency to flicker in the most inopportune moments, for example when I was trying to read what room I was supposed to go to. The hall was filled with more students, all of them rushing around to get to their lockers and pick up what they would need for the first lesson. 

I didn’t feel ready to ask anyone where I was supposed to go, therefore I simply decided to wing it and started walking down the halls and deeper into the prison school. 

As if by a miracle, I somehow found the room with the right number and knocked on the door gingerly before being ushered inside by a corpulent lady with an awful white blouse which reflected the light of the ceiling lamps and almost blinded me in the process. She took her place behind a massive desk that was absolutely swamped with papers and handed me a crumpled schedule, telling me to walk up to the teachers and tell them who I was before taking a seat. 

I was then unceremoniously thrown out of the office, back into the halls. I discovered they were quickly clearing out, everyone getting ready for their first lesson; and sure enough, the ringing of a shrill bell loudly cut through my eardrums. 

I struggled to find the right room and while my nose was buried deep in the schedule in my hands, I of course bumped into someone who was rushing their way to their first class. 

“Oh, sorry-” I started, but immediately cut myself off when I saw who it was that I had stumbled upon. 

“Hey, I know you!” I exclaimed, sounding embarrassingly relieved. 

“You’re…you’re Jay’s roommate’s girlfriend, right?” the girl asked. I almost hadn’t recognized her now that she looked well-rested and almost comfortable. 

“Ha, not exactly.” I smirked. “I’m George’s sister.” 

“Oh. Well, I’m Amy,” she said, giving me a shy half-smile. 

I returned it reluctantly, but eventually cracked. “Jade.” I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly. “Could you, uh, tell me where room 208 is?” I eventually got myself to ask. 

“Sure. We got the same homeroom class, I’ll walk you there, I guess.” 

As we started off toward the end of the hall, we were both completely silent. Our wordlessness was amplified by the almost empty corridors now – how had all the students disappeared so quickly? – and it seemed as though we were the only ones here right now. Eventually, however, I was unable to handle it anymore and felt physically compelled to break the silence. 

“Jorel is a fucking douchebag,” I spat. “Sleeping with a high school student.” 

Amy flinched. “It’s not like he forced me to do anything. Trust me, I gave my full enthusiastic consent. It was just a little embarrassing to have to deal with his roommate and friends and stuff.” 

“Even if he didn’t force himself on you, that’s a fucking dick move.”

“Well, he’s pretty hot.” 

“That’s neither an explanation nor an excuse.” I was well aware that I probably sounded harsh and a little condescending, but I felt like Jorel deserved to be badmouthed, just a little bit. “All you did was feed the guy’s ego, which he definitely didn’t need.” 

“Probably.” 

We remained silent for the rest of the walk, me wondering whether I had just messed up my only chance of having even a single friend at this godforsaken school and Amy quite obviously still very uncomfortable at the memory of being left so vulnerable by Jorel. 

God, Jorel. Simply the sound of his name had the power to send me into a fit of white-hot rage. What kind of idiot would do something like that? Sleep with a girl that was probably not even eighteen yet and then throw her out in the morning, without giving her a kind goodbye? Not that there was anything wrong with one-night stands, that was just…not a very nice way to deal with it, let’s put it that way. His actions definitely didn’t put him on the list of people I would want to spend more time with, that much was sure. 

Over the course of the day, though, I learnt that Amy was actually a quite pleasant individual. We spent a lot of time together as she didn’t have a lot of friends of her own (save for a really weird guy called Mike who was very obviously checking me out, not even trying to hide it, the bastard) and decided to show me around for the duration of my first day. I thanked her profusely while she was showing me the way to our gym class, to which she replied with a shrug and a silent whisper of ‘it’s good to have someone who looks intimidating around you’. I didn’t ask her what she meant by that or why exactly she thought anyone would find me intimidating, but I was soon granted my answer when we rolled into the cafeteria for lunch. 

The room was basically divided in two halves: One half being a preppy bunch of rich-ass Hollywood brats, the other end filled with the working class-looking teenagers. Not only were they divided by a whole row of empty lunch tables, but also did the color different spring up immediately. Like the poorer kids were all darker – a thought I instantly felt sickened by. Exclusion of people of color started in high school, even. 

It was absolutely nauseating. 

Amy quickly pulled me over to a somewhat neutral section by the sleeve, forcibly sitting me down and not talking for the entire lunch. 

I was gnawing on what I had seen even when the final bell rang, signaling that it was time for us to go home. 

Leaving the concrete square posing as a school building turned out to be even more of a challenge than getting in there in the first place. Seeing as almost all the students got off at the same time, the entrance was absolutely packed with kids trying to get away and to their cars as fast as possible. This was so un-suburban that I already felt like running away and locking myself in a toilet stall so I would not have to face this place any longer. 

Idling in the curb in front of the building was a group of cars – probably parents picking up younger kids. My eyes skimmed over the crowd in search of my brother, but I could spot neither him nor Jordon, which filled me with a genuinely uneasy feeling for I remembered what George had said this morning. It couldn’t be…

“Just get in the fucking car, princess, I don’t have all day.” 

Jorel was wearing his hood pulled all the way over his head despite the smothering Los Angeles warmth (probably some sort of fashion statement) along with a pair of disgusting sweatpants. The snapback sticking out of his hood probably came with some kind of slightly offensive print that I couldn’t see thanks to the height difference. 

“No one ever told you staring’s rude?” he snapped while I was busy inwardly expressing my distaste over his clothing ensemble. 

“No one ever told you my eyes are up here?” I pointed, and he quickly snapped his gaze upward to my face. I was suddenly painfully aware of Amy’s presence to my right and quickly turned to big her goodbye. She, however, didn’t look upset at all; instead she was blatantly checking Jorel out. They never learn, do they? 

“See you tomorrow, Amy,” I said forcefully, snapping her out of her daze. 

“Sure,” she replied dreamily, and then walked off, although with visible reluctance. 

“You’re so disgusting,” I snarled at Jorel as I shoved my schoolbag into the passenger side of his car, getting in soon after. 

“Sorry, didn’t hear that over the sound of you getting all hot and bothered,” he said as he slammed his foot down on the clutch violently. Who on earth still drove stick? 

“I think you mistook that for the sound of all fluid draining from my lower regions because of how fucking despicable you are.” Admittedly, I wasn’t exactly on top of my game that day – stooping low enough to fight him on his own level was usually not what I would have done – but something about this guy really ground my gears. 

“Well, even Michael Jackson has a few haters,” said Jorel while pulling out of the parking lot. All while not switching gears yet, causing the engine to howl in desperation as he revved up into the regions of 4000 tours. 

“Which is a convenient example, considering he was accused of molesting children as well,” I snapped at him. 

“As well?” All amusement had drained from Jorel’s voice quite suddenly. 

I smirked tightly, trying to retain a carelessly taunting tone. “Well, you didn’t seem to mind that Amy here is almost jailbait when you fucked her Friday night.” 

He raised his eyebrows. “Who?” 

I should have seen it coming. “The girl that was just standing next to me? You slept with her Friday night and when she was still there on Saturday, you blew up at her.” My nostrils flared. “I remember that ‘cause that’s the first I saw of you. A disgusting asshole yelling at a girl to get out after he’d gotten what he wanted from her.” 

We were silent for a moment, the only sound coming from the engine that had now moved its way down to a steady whine as Jorel had finally had mercy and shifted into the third gear. 

“Oh, you wanted me to apologize?” he suddenly broke the silence. “Sorry, didn’t get that.” 

I simply rolled my eyes, unwilling to play his game anymore. He, however, was more than willing to. 

“No, you need to tell me these things, ‘cause I’m a dude, and I need to be shown the ropes. Isn’t that what you twenty-first century emancipation bitches think?” 

I took a deep breath, hopefully sucking in enough oxygen for it to be drained from the confined space of the car so he would choke to death. “Great, a little bit of rampant misogyny. At least we’ve advanced into polysyllabic words.” 

“That’s right, ‘cause I’m the stupidest motherfucker on earth, right?” He was now slowly slipping into the same annoyed, passive-aggressive tone of voice as I had talked in for the past five minutes. Jorel was a shit driver, especially when he was pissed. 

“Maybe not _the_ stupidest. I’m sure some anti-vaxxers could beat you to it when it comes to IQ, although you can never be sure.” I gave a tight, cynical smile. “And for the record, female emancipation is probably one of the most important political movements of the twenty-first century. Although if it were up to you, we’d probably still all be scrubbing the floor and cooking dinner for you while you’d use us as a human equivalent to a blow-up sex doll. And if that doesn’t work anymore, you’d go elsewhere to find yourself a good fuck. Isn’t that right, _J-Dog_?” 

“Has no one in your fucking high school debate team told you that it makes your arguments unbelievable when you start assuming shit about your adversary?” he said with a smirk. He was taking his eyes off the road far too often for my liking, especially as we were currently speeding down the backstreets near Sunset Boulevard. Or at least I thought it was Sunset. Jorel was going so fast that I couldn’t really see any of the shopfronts, let alone decipher the street signs. 

“Oh, we’re adversaries now?” He took a particularly sharp left turn, causing me to almost be smashed against the passenger side door in the process. “Fuck, you’re gonna crash the car if you keep going over the limit like that.” 

“Oh, no!” he said in a fake hysterical voice, probably thinking it somewhat resembled mine. “Dying slow seems a little boring, though, doesn’t it?” His grin widened as he saw my panicked expression at his reckless driving (and reckless thinking), adding to the already omnipresent fear of his indifference over whether he and I lived or died. 

“You’re a fucking psychopath, Jorel,” I snarled. 

The only reply I got was maniacal laughter. We didn’t talk for the next five minutes for he was probably readying himself for the next verbal blow he wanted to deliver while I was simply trying to pretend I was somewhere else, preferably New York City with my best friend Sara. 

Shit. 

_No, don’t think about Sara. Don’t think about Val. Don’t think about anyone from home_.

Jorel apparently saw my pained expression and sped up even more, still refusing to shift so we were pretty close to hitting 5000 tours which already had me mourning for all the trees he was killing right now. Eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Would you please just fucking _shift the fucking gear_?” I hissed. “I can hear the oil industry doing a victory dance ‘cause of the extra million dollars they make because assholes like you don’t know how to save gas.” 

“And I can hear the textile industry doing a ‘victory dance’ cause they tricked you into buying all that organic fair trade shit when it’s the exact same as the stuff from other stores, only five dollars more expensive.” He looked over again, almost hitting an old lady about to cross the street. “Did you hear me complain about it?” 

“No, but I can hear _nature_ complaining, so either slow down or shift.”

He was apparently feeling extra-provocative that day as he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal even more, causing me to suck in a sharp breath. I prayed that we would be at the apartment soon, if only so I would be able to lock myself in George’s (my) room and avoid Jorel for the rest of the day under the pretense of having to do homework. Although he probably had plans to get fucked up that night – or who knew, maybe the guy even had a job. Ha, ha. Laughable, I know. 

Fortunately, whatever God was on duty at the moment had heard my prayer and taken pity for we soon arrived at what I discovered to be the crappy apartment building which George and Jorel lived in. And now me, too, I supposed. 

“Thanks for the lift,” I said gruffly before piling out of the car. 

“No problem,” Jorel replied in a sickeningly sugary voice. 

Right when I was about to take on the stairs, a particularly cheerful Dylan came stumbling through the front door. He looked way too happy to not be on something. I inwardly groaned as I discovered his hazy, glazed-over eyes and delirious smile. 

“You’re real green,” he said, gesturing to his head, “In the face.” 

I nodded. “Jorel can’t drive for shit.” 

Dylan snickered. “Jorel’s very pretty.” 

I simply rolled my eyes and led the way, Jorel and Dylan trailing behind me up the stairs. I soon realized that might not have been the wisest choice of my life because as soon as we reached the second flight, I could basically feel both their gazes on my ass. When I turned around, Dylan at least had the decency to look away while Jorel simply kept staring. 

“No one ever taught you staring’s rude?” I repeated his words from earlier. 

“No one ever told you my eyes are up here?” he shot back. I had admittedly been talking to his abdomen rather than his face. In my defense, though, his shirt had just ridden up, revealing a strip of darkly tattooed skin of his flat, probably quite smooth stomach. I gulped. And I had found it quite hard to look him in the eyes from day one, probably because of the utter abhorrence I felt toward him. 

Without another word, I restarted my trek up the stairs until we eventually reached the apartment door, where I stepped aside to let Jorel unlock. He did so, taking his sweet-ass time to dig the keys out of his pocket, knowing that I was getting impatient simply watching him. 

Dylan, however, seemed to be quite entertained. He was studying his own hands like they were the most fascinating thing he had ever seen, balling them into fists and reopening them repeatedly. 

“What are you doing here, anyway, Dylan?” I asked. 

He visibly jumped, looking at me with a hazy smile. “My Dad was beating up my mother again so I thought I’d just come here. It’s nice here.” He walked over to the sofa where he instantly plopped down, burying himself in the cushions while I simply stood there, astonished. 

“What?” snapped Jorel, all the playfulness gone from his voice. “Too fucked up? Not trendy enough for you?” 

I couldn’t bring myself to reply as I continued simply standing and staring. Jorel moved over to the couch, sitting himself down next to Dylan, who immediately put his head into his friend’s lap, silently burying his face in his hair. 

I wasn’t whipped out of my daze until a teeny tiny whimper surfaced from the pathetic heap that Dylan had transformed into in what seemed like the fraction of a second. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Jorel. 

I suddenly jerked back into motion, shutting the door behind me and walking back into the room George had cleared out for me where I set my schoolbag down to sit on the bed for a while. 

I couldn’t understand this. Simply couldn’t. A man so cheerful, so happy, and then he harbored a secret so dark and deep that it raised goosebumps all over my skin and sent shivers down my back when I dared to even touch upon it in the very depth of my mind.


	7. Day of the Undead

I couldn’t focus on anything knowing that Dylan was in the next room, sunken deep into all fifty shades of pain because he had witnessed an act of violence so cruel that he hadn’t been able to bear being sober any longer. It took hours upon hours for me to finally muster up the nerve to crack open the door to the living room. However, my concern was unneeded as I saw a softly breathing heap of Dylan sprawled all over the couch with his feet propped on the armrest and the TV flickering softly in the dark room, no Jorel in sight. They had not even bothered to open the blinds or to turn on the light. 

I slowly sat myself down on the floor next to the sofa. 

“You can sit up here,” said a deep, crackly voice. I looked up to find Dylan very much awake, the stoned haze gone from his eyes. 

I pulled myself upward to sit back down in the tiny spot of sofa that he had cleared. An uncomfortable silence enveloped us for a while until eventually, he made the first move to speak up. 

“We always come here ‘cause George and Jorel are the only ones of us that have their own place,” he said. “Matt lives with his Dad, Jordon lives with his Mama and I live with both my parents.” He shifted slightly, pushing himself into a sitting position so he could see the TV without the coffee table obscuring his view. “So you’re gonna have to deal with us being over all the time.” 

“I don’t think it’s my place to care whether you’re here or not, this is not my apartment,” I replied evenly, although it was hard to contain the tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. 

“It is now,” said Dylan. 

I raised my eyebrows, still without taking my gaze off the TV image. Luckily he saw it in his peripheral vision and said, “You’re part of the family now.” 

I resumed inspecting my nails like they were the most interesting thing in the world as the movie on TV was now showing a badly censored sex scene and I felt the blush creeping up on my cheeks quickly. 

“I don’t think anyone other than you and George sees it that way.” I surprised myself with how sad I truly sounded. “I also don’t think I’ve earned the part.” 

Suddenly, I felt a big hand on my shoulder. It was almost scalding, probably because of the fact that Dylan had just slept and he appeared to be one of these guys who always heated up like radiators when napping. 

“You don’t have to earn shit,” he said. “With all the crap you’ve been through, you got a free pass to bitch at anyone you like for, like, at least a month.” 

I smiled. Dylan was probably the first one (besides George) who made me feel genuinely welcome here in Los Angeles, and I was infinitely grateful for that. I know it was irrational craving for warmth in these men since I had not been exactly nice to the lot of them – but I could simply not help my idiotic teenaged self at times. 

“I’m sorry for being such an ass,” I said eventually. 

Dylan laughed good-naturedly, taking his hand off my shoulder and slinging the entire arm around me. It wasn’t a sexually charged gesture by any means; he was simply being nice and brotherly. Therefore, I let myself enjoy the warmth, relaxing into his touch and leaning against his shoulder where I inhaled his scent of sweet smoke. I normally hated stoners with a fiery passion, but seeing as Dylan had something to smoke away, I could sort of understand why he would do it. And criticizing others because they handled their problems poorly suddenly seemed like such a hypocritical thing to do. 

This was the way my brother found us when he returned in the evening, curled up on the couch together with Dylan’s arm slung safely around my shoulder and me snuggling into him. 

For whatever reason, I felt like part of my grief for my father had been lessened by the proximity to a person who genuinely liked me. Dylan’s warmth stood in such a stark contrast to the cold month of mourning. 

“What the fuck?” interrupted a rough voice from the door. “I think I made it pretty clear that none of you are gonna try to get with my sister, _King Kong_.” 

“We were just –” I stuttered.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” said Dylan, slowly retracting his arm. I immediately felt cold and let out a short, embarrassing whine at the cold. “Your sis was feeling down so Funny did some cheering up.” I could practically hear him snap back into the pattern of the hood wannabe. 

“Jade, I –”

“Calm down, George,” I cut him off. “I was crying and Dylan talked to me.” 

“Shit, what happened? Are you okay?” asked George. He sounded rushed and panicked, causing me to immediately feel bad for my little white lie. 

“It’s okay. I just miss Grandma, is all,” I said quietly. 

That seemed to do the trick as George dropped the topic and started talking about dinner and what he wanted and what I wanted. We ended up eating lasagna that Jordon’s Mom had sent him with – he had rolled up at around seven, saying that she was concerned that George’s baby sister was not eating well, which made me wonder why on earth she knew that I was in Los Angeles. They had probably hung up a notice on the Hollywood bulletin board. 

I dropped down on my bed, exhausted, at around ten in the evening, falling asleep straight after.

-

The rest of the week was spent in a somewhat similar manner. Jordon and George would ship me off to school in the morning, I would spend the entire day talking to Amy (carefully avoiding the topic of a certain tattooed, dark-haired idiot and her slightly disturbing infatuation with said individual) and eventually, the two of them would pick me up again. I discovered that Jorel did, in fact, have a job, which he tended to every day save for Monday, Saturday and Sunday – him picking me up from school had been a rare exception due to the fact that George and Jordon had both been called into work for extra shifts as their colleagues had somehow simultaneously decided to ditch. 

I learnt that my brother and his friends lived a somewhat regulated life; a nine to five rhythm if you will. They all had jobs and their band was sort of their big dream (even though all of them knew that it was not going anywhere) and they all had an uncanny tendency to get drunk over whatever issue might surface. It was a problem-solving technique I found simply idiotic, but no one ever asked for my opinion. 

I also knew that every single one of them, without exception, despised their job and wanted to do nothing more than make the band full-time. I almost felt sorry for them (except for Jorel, because he can kiss my ass) but then again I saw them emptying out bottles of what they called ‘40s’ (malt liquor, as I found out later) in about three seconds flat and all pity was washed away by disgruntled disapproval for their behavior. 

However, despite all these oddities and annoying character traits, I had grown quite fond of the lot of them. Dylan and Jordon were jokers; always cracking me up when I would have had a horrible day. Matt was a mature soul (a fact that earned him a lot of shit from Jordon) which was impressive considering he spent most of his time with their little group, none of whose members were even remotely mature. Except maybe George. 

Oh, and speak of the devil. 

The relationship between me and George was still…somewhat tense, to be honest. Even though we had decided to give it a try, he still tended to go over my head to decide ‘what was best for me’ because he wanted to protect me and I still wanted to rip his head off when he did it. We clashed horribly at times, resulting in me crying through two out of four nights. 

But somehow, we made it to Friday. I was walking out of the school building, carrying a massive pile of books and a massive scowl to go along with it. With a mumbled goodbye to Amy, I made my way over to the group of overly attached parents and idiotically overprotective older brothers to spot – oh, the déjà vu – none other than Jorel Decker himself. Now, that was something that had not quite been resolved in the past week. 

Whenever Jorel and I managed to stumble upon each other in the small apartment (we had kept it at a minimum, impressively so seeing as we, well, lived together), it had resulted in a fight of epic proportions. More often than not, it had ended in one of the guys entering the apartment to the sight of the two of us screaming at each other like our lives depended on it. I couldn’t say what it was that pissed me off so much about Jorel, but I couldn’t help wanting to snap at him whenever he did something even as miniscule as taking a too-loud breath. 

Luckily, though, he had not come alone. Dylan and Matt were leaning against the hood of the car, Dylan smoking a cigarette that suspiciously did not look like a cigarette at all. 

“Quit smoking that shit here, Dylan,” I hissed instead of a greeting, “You’ll get me in trouble.” 

He simply laughed, loudly and good-naturedly. 

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, babe,” he replied. 

I was trying insanely hard to put on a scowl, but it quickly turned into a half-smile as well. While I was throwing my schoolbag into the backseat and getting ready to pile in, suddenly, someone tapped my shoulder. 

“Hey, uh, Jade,” said Amy, scratching the back of her neck shyly. 

The guys looked over with vague disinterest while Jorel simply got in the driver’s seat, huffing out an annoyed breath in the process. 

“I was just, uh…you forgot your pen on my desk in science class.” She handed me a pen with some stupid promotional logo on it that I indeed discovered to be mine, though I did not think that was the actual reason why she had followed me. 

“Thanks?” I replied therefore, raising my eyebrows while Dylan behind me let out a stupid snicker. 

“You coming, babe?” he asked, holding the door open for me. 

“Yeah,” I said. I turned back to Amy, who was now staring at the driver’s side with a faraway look in her eyes. Ah, so that was why. 

“Don’t even think about it,” I told her with a stern look and got into the car next to Matt, who was now shaking with uncontrollable laughter, although that might have been because of a text he was reading. You could never know with Matt. 

Dylan folded his long, lanky body into the passenger’s seat and Jorel revved up the engine, pulling out of the parking lot quickly. At least today, I was able to block out the speed since I wasn’t sitting directly in front of the dashboard with the speedometer practically screaming in my face. 

“What was that all about?” asked Dylan, as if he didn’t already know, the asshole. 

“My friend has a huge crush on Jorel, even though he basically ditched her after having sex with her,” I explained with a venomous look in the driver’s direction. Jorel simply smirked and slammed down on the gas pedal even more. We were speeding through another set of backstreets and I was honestly impressed that he still managed to navigate through this maze when going this fast. 

“Boo-hoo,” he said monotonously, while Dylan was losing his shit in the passenger seat. Matt simply rolled his eyes. 

“She eighteen?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” I replied, “Barely.” The last word gave me some sort of satisfaction, especially when I saw Jorel’s expression tighten. 

“Because a three-year-difference is just so fucking horrible,” he snarled. 

“It actually is awful, yeah,” I replied. “Because if she had been seventeen, you would have been committing statutory rape.” I smiled at him cynically. “And also, it makes it like ten times worse that you just abandoned the girl after you had sex with her. I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly good for a person’s emotional and psychological development.” 

“Do you ever stop judging people when it’s none of your fuckin’ business?” asked Jorel. He turned around to glare at me, causing my eyes to widen in panic. 

“Eyes on the _fucking_ road, Decker!” I exclaimed. 

“Whoa, hey, guys,” Dylan stepped in. “Make love, not war.” He grinned stupidly at his own joke and, yeah, okay, not a cigarette. 

“Disgusting.” I immediately had to gag at the thought of doing anything like that with Jorel. 

“I’d rather have my anaconda deep-throated by piranhas, thank you very much,” he said. 

“Guys!” Matt exclaimed suddenly. “Grow the hell up.” 

For the rest of the drive, the two of us were sulking quietly while Dylan and Matt upheld a decent conversation about something band-related. Or, well, tried to. 

After a little while, I realized that we weren’t going in the right direction if we wanted to go to the apartment. When I voiced that concern, Dylan simply smiled and explained that George was trying to surprise me. 

We arrived after a little while (probably thirty minutes or so early because Jorel had simply not stopped slamming his foot down on the gas pedal) and piled out of the car. 

“You look a little green,” said Dylan, with another one of his stupid smiles. 

“Well, I’ve just had to sit through twenty minutes of hell because someone here,” I glared at Jorel pointedly, “cannot drive like a normal person.” 

Dylan only laughed while Jorel rolled his eyes, making sure that I saw him while he did it. I couldn’t quite grasp that he was twenty years old when he was behaving like a snotty prepubescent tween all the time. 

I rolled my eyes, looking around the parking lot to have something to cut this conversation short with. Much to my surprise, George was already here, leaning against the door of a quite nice-looking pizzeria – it was not enough to qualify as a restaurant, but it was nice. 

There was a very cool vibe to it, with plastic plants cutting off sections of the room; a subtle way of trying to cover up that most of the tables and chairs were mismatched. The wainscoted walls were decorated with pictures and other vaguely ‘Italian’ things, pictures of noodles and other stuff like that.   
It was cute. 

“We come here almost every week,” said George, “It’s kind of a tradition. Come here, then go to band practice together.” He was smiling broadly and stupidly, and I couldn’t help returning the gesture. 

There was a short moment until he seemed to remember something and finally stepped aside, opening the view on a quite short, scrawny guy. His eyes were half-hidden beneath the shadow of the cap he was wearing; a fact that made him seem a little odd and creepy. I honestly did not think I would like him much. 

“This is Aron,” he finally said, indicating said guy. 

The tension in the group was almost graspable as Aron gave me a look that could have quite possibly pulverized me if it had not been for the shadow obscuring his view. 

“Hi,” I said finally, even though it took a lot of convincing myself. 

“This is my sister, Jade,” said George. I gave a halfway-friendly smile while George led us over to a corner booth, the waiter giving a nod as a greeting; a gesture which indicated that he did, in fact, know that my brother and his friends liked to come here often. 

“We all know by now,” Jorel muttered viciously, causing me to throw him a pointed glare. 

Other than that, I ignored him for the rest of the afternoon. Our food was absolutely delicious and even though I would never admit it, I was quite moved by the fact that they seemed to include me in their traditions right away (well, everyone except Jorel and Aron). 

We spent a nice afternoon together (save for the fact that I had had to take a two-hour walk because ‘chicks don’t get to watch us practice’; thanks Jorel, you chauvinistic pig) and, in the evening, Dylan, Jorel, George and I went to the apartment. Jordon had had to bail that afternoon because he had gotten called into work, but he met us at the front door so we could step into the apartment together. 

Jorel immediately made a beeline for his room, ignoring me and George and everybody else in the process. He reemerged minutes later, muttering something about going out with Aron, and quickly stormed out of the apartment. 

“What’s up with Jay?” asked Dylan at some point after the guy’s dramatic exit. 

“Dude’s pissed at me, but whatever,” said George. “Not your problem.” Dylan raised his eyebrows, but otherwise didn’t seem to be deterred. 

“How’re you liking LA, babe?” he asked me after a moment, when George and Jordon were busy bickering about something related to their band, again. 

I pondered my answer for a while. “It’s cool, I guess. I just feel kind of overwhelmed with all the new people I’m meeting.” 

“Yeah. But girl, you’re safe with us. We’re the best people you could’ve met, serious.” 

There was something reassuring about Dylan and his warm smile, to be honest. He was different from the other guys in the sense that he seemed a lot less broken into pieces by the wrongly-named City of Angels. I reckoned he hadn’t been living in Hollywood for long as he didn’t quite have the same empty look in his eyes when he spoke about it. 

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, baby.” 

I raised my eyebrows. “Why should I be hard on myself?” 

Dylan snorted. “Oh, kid. I think every single person with eyes can see that you feel like shit. You’re mad at yourself bitching at George, but honestly, no one’ll really care. Your dad just died and you had to move across the entire country to live in a two-bedroom apartment with one guy who wants to fuck you and is mad at himself ‘cause of that and another guy who has no idea how to treat an actual real-life teenage girl.” At the moment, he sounded like a therapist rather than the usual stoner, and I was not sure whether I liked his sudden change of character. 

I shook my head, snickering slightly. “You got all that from, what, the look on my face?” 

“Yah,” he said, a shit-eating grin on his face, “I’m the best in the hood.” 

I rolled my eyes. Not much change of character, luckily. 

“Trust me,” said Dylan, “and get some sleep, girl. The bags under your eyes got bags under their eyes.” 

Our conversation ended at that for Jordon and George suddenly snapped back into reality and out of their discussion of MySpace and its promotional purposes.


	8. Heavy Rain

Lightning was painting the room in an eerily blueish color, flaring up in sharp, angry shocks to be followed by rolling thunder which almost deafened me completely, loud and menacing. When I had first been shipped off to California, people had only been telling me about the warm, beautiful weather and comforting sunshine – of course, everyone had failed to mention the insane thunderstorms which took place about once every month. I had hoped that I would be able to avoid them by arriving in late winter, but that was obviously not working. 

I was currently curled up under a blanket in my room, desperately trying to block out the noises with loud music which, of course, wasn’t working at all. I simply clutched the pillow tighter to my chest, hugging it closely and whispering along to the lyrics of a Nirvana song. 

It was slightly ridiculous, really: I was a seventeen-year old woman; I was very capable of setting up my own doctor’s appointments and doing my income tax return – but thunderstorms, for some reason, still knocked me off my feet and left my crying in my room like eight-year-old Jade, the smaller version of me that still believed her brother to be a traitor and a disappointment. Rain, on one hand, was rather calming to me. I had always enjoyed the sound and had a tendency to walk over to my piano and start writing whenever it was raining back in Jersey. But thunderstorms just had a way more threatening character; like they would easily tear you into a million bloody shreds if given the chance. 

Suddenly, a particularly bright lightning bolt struck almost at the same time as the bone-shattering thunder. The power went out in a simple breath, knocked out by the sheer force of the storm above us. 

I shrieked, shooting up straight into a sitting position. My headphones lay forgotten on the duvet, quietly blaring on while I gathered all the force that was left in my body and shoved myself off the bed, tapering into the direction of the door. 

Staying in my room was absolutely impossible. Even if I had to put up with Jorel’s incessant taunting for the rest of the night, perhaps even afterwards, I could not bear being in there any longer. 

The living room was equally as pitch dark as my bedroom, the only light source being the cold blue light that shone through the window, coming from the other buildings along the street and the neon-colored billboards. Rain was pattering down on the windowsill while wind was howling loudly enough for me to want to reach up and cover my ears. 

On the sofa, curled into a heap of blankets and holding a steaming mug of coffee, was Jorel. How he could drink coffee at half past ten and still be able to sleep some was an absolute mystery to me. 

“Scared of the dark, princess?” he mocked with a smirk. 

I didn’t reply, simply plopped down next to him. 

He sighed. 

“Don’t you think it’s a little pathetic for a seventeen-year-old to be _that_ afraid of the dark?” he went on, a mean expression on his face. 

I still didn’t reply, merely sat there, enjoying the comforting presence of another human being, even if it was Jorel Decker of all people. 

“What, cat got your tongue?” I saw him set the mug down on the coffee table out the corner of my eye. “Or are you so scared that you’re at a loss for words?” 

I rolled my eyes. 

When I still didn’t say anything, he did something I never would’ve expected: He tugged his blanket back and threw it over my lap, scooting closer so we could share. 

“If you tell anyone about this, I will end you,” he said. 

And then he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. 

I honestly cannot say that I know why I let him; why I didn’t push him off and why I didn’t simply punch him in the face and walk away, but I for some reason, I leaned into his touch, sliding even closer until I was pressed up against his warm body. 

And warm he was; comforting and cozy against my skin. I had hardly even realized how cold I had been until I was curled up at his side.   
In the menacing light the storm was casting, I could only see his glittering eyes in the dark, looking down at me with a mixture of concern and amusement. His high cheekbones looked sharp and defined while his lips looked just so much softer and more inviting than usually. 

I gulped, suddenly wondering why I was serenading this man’s beauty in my mind. This was _Jorel Decker_ we were talking about, for fuck’s sake. 

He pulled me even closer, tucking my head in the crease of his neck and wrapping his second arm around my middle so I was truly and safely wrapped up. 

It was that position I remember falling asleep in. A deep, comforting sleep that lasted for hours on end, dreamless and, most importantly, nightmareless.

-

When I woke up, the warmth beside my body was gone and the coffee mug on the table in front of me was empty. I groggily looked around to find the living room void of all life and, luckily, filled with the ugly light coming from the half-broken lightbulb on the ceiling. 

Outside the window, the streets looked like nothing had even happened, dry and beautiful and sunny as always. 

With a quick look at the clock I realized that it was only eight AM, which suggested that I had slept for almost ten and a half hours. Insane.   
I had not slept that long since our father had still been alive. 

One and a half months, I reminded myself. Exactly forty-two days since the accident. Forty-two days since my father had been wheeled into a hospital and declared dead twenty-three minutes later. Forty-two days since Lory had died at the site of the accident, severe blood loss having killed her long before the paramedics had had the time to arrive. 

When I closed my eyes, I remembered exactly how I had walked into the hospital that night, hopeful that my father would wake up in mere seconds, telling me that he loved me and that he was sorry that he had been driving recklessly – that it would never happen again. I remembered exactly how the doctors had had to tell me that my father was not going to wake up, that he was practically brain-dead and that it was no use trying to keep him alive any longer. Sometimes I wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t let them pull the plug right away. Would he have woken up? Would he have been the same Dad whom I had known for seventeen years? 

For some reason, the full force of what had happened hit me that exact moment. I felt like I was being crashed full-frontal into a freezing cold pool of water, headfirst and without warning. My muscles gave out beneath me and I sunk back down into the sofa, weakness grabbing me like a greedy monster in the back of my closet. Suddenly, it felt like my skin had been turned inside out, all the nerve endings now lying blank atop my body so every single movement, every slight touch sent sharp shockwaves of pain through me. 

He was dead. My father was dead. 

Lory was dead – and I had never liked her much, honestly, but she had not deserved to die this young. No one ever deserved to die this young.   
But now they were all gone; I was the last of them left. It was only me, surrounded by a world of lonely people, surrounded by the affliction of a world where dreams became nightmares. I felt like I had been shown the devil down here in the City of Angels. 

When in reality, my own personal devil was inside me. My father was dead, my mother was dead. 

All I had left was George, and I was pushing him away. 

I felt like I had plunged headfirst into a pool of ice-cold water, but my skin was burning up, scalding and hot and so, so painful. Where was all this phantom pain coming from? 

“Shit, Jade?” said a voice from somewhere in the room. I couldn’t make out its owner, everything around me was blurry. 

“Jade, hey, Jade.” The voice was closer now; hands were gripping my shoulders and pulling me upwards, against another body, broad-shouldered and sort of rough around the edges. 

_George_. 

“It’s okay, shhhh,” he cooed, cradling my body closer to his. I felt his hand run through my hair repeatedly, touching me in a somewhat comforting manner. 

“Th-th,” I tried to say, but my mouth was too dry for every single sound. I gulped, and tried again. “They’re dead.” 

George’s hand stopped in my hair momentarily, and I was suddenly painfully aware that I was talking about his father as well, not only mine. “I know,” he said quietly. 

“I’m s-sorry,” I sobbed into his chest. 

He simply sat there, holding me close and running his hand through my hair again and again. 

“It’s okay,” he repeated over and over again, until the sentence had been so deeply ingrained into my head that I almost believed it. 

“It’s going to be okay.” 

I don’t know for how long we sat there, holding on to each other because we were the only ones left. I simply focused on his comforting warmth and big, calloused hands running up and down my back awkwardly. He was not used to holding a girl like this, to holding anyone like this. None of his friends seemed like the girlfriend-having type, to be honest, and neither did he. He managed just fine however, and I was more than grateful for his loving care. 

He was trying so hard. 

And we were going to get through this – together, as brother and sister.


	9. Make It Through the Day

Dylan and I were taking up a corner booth at Denny’s, awkwardly sipping our drinks and staring pointedly at everything that was definitely not the other’s face. The chocolate milkshake was decent, but not good, and Dylan looked fully sober. 

“This isn’t your version of coming on to me, is it?” I asked finally, when I couldn’t bear the silence any longer. 

Dylan simply laughed good-naturedly, shoving his coke aside and raising an incredulous eyebrow at me. “You Ragans for sure know how to crack a joke.” 

Now it was my turn to look incredulous and maybe slightly bewildered. 

“Well,” he said with a grin, “If I was trying to woo you, you’d be naked and writhing by now.” 

It took everything I had in me not to burst out laughing. It was simply such an odd image: Dylan, the sweet boy from Anaheim, who had graduated high school with an impressively good GPA (he had been pretty baked when taking the finals, mind you) and the same person that had told me that I was ‘part of the family now’, pretending to be some kind of ladykiller – it was the most misplaced image that had ever surfaced in front of my inner eye. 

“You look like you’re about to combust,” he pointed out. It was the last straw; I cracked up laughing. Soon after, Dylan joined in and we ended up giggling like tweens in the middle of the restaurant with two half-empty glasses in front of us. 

“Now, why did you really want to meet up?” I asked finally, when the laughter had almost died down. 

Dylan was red in the face from all the snickering, and I decided that he was a best friend rather than boyfriend material. Not that I had ever even considered trying to get with him; he was my brother’s friend above all else and now that I had patched up my relationship with said brother, there was no way I would put our newfound reunion at stake for some D. 

“’Cause you looked like you needed someone not-George in your life for a little while,” he confessed, causing me to smile. 

“That might not be as dumb as some of the other shit you’ve said.” I was still pointedly not looking at him but my hands because…well, Dylan was a little intense at times. It appeared that he had somewhat of a controversial personality altogether. On one side, he was this civilized, well-educated young man who acted warm and loving and had an uncanny talent for reading my thoughts in my eyes. On the other side, he was a notorious player and the only thing on his mind was where to get the next chick. He was always, of course, so unmistakably _Dylan_ , a joker with all his heart and a person you always wanted around, no matter whether you were sad or happy. 

“So how’re you coping?” 

“With what?” 

He raised an eyebrow. “Everything.” 

I shrugged awkwardly, not quite knowing what to reply. I had gone from staring at my own hands to staring at his hands, which I counted as an improvement altogether. 

“I guess I’m okay,” I said quietly, twisting and twirling my fingers together absentmindedly. 

“Your lips say yes, but your eyes say no, babe.” 

“Gross.” 

He laughed out loud this time, and I shortly jerked my gaze upward to look at him for a second, but then I went back to staring at my hands. 

“Really, though. I know that you say everything is fine between you and George, but you can only pretend for so long.”  
I nodded silently. 

“And it’s not something to be ashamed of, really. I mean, honestly, if I had a brother and we’d been separated for nine years, shit would’ve gone down at some point. But what with you having a pretty nice pair of boobs instead of balls, things are bound to get weird.” 

“What do you mean?” I was deliberately ignoring the comment about my boobs because I felt that he would be quite mad if that had been the only thing in his statement that had made me think. 

“Well, he last saw you when you were eight. You’re a grown-ass woman now, emphasis on the ass.” 

“Fuck you, Dylan.”

“Alright girl, when and where?” 

I simply rolled my eyes, going back to mulling things over quietly. We were silent for a few seconds until I finally forced myself to speak up again. 

“I mean, it’s not only crazy for him. Last time I saw him he was awkward and tiny and fourteen and had his nose permanently stuck in a John Steinbeck novel.” I was still not looking at Dylan, but I had advanced to staring at his ear while he talked. His ear because staring at his mouth would’ve raised some pretty awkward questions and the ear was closest to his eyes. 

“Yeah, and now he’s some big bad motherfucker with badass friends and a fuckin’ band.”

“Wouldn’t have described it that way, but if that tastes better going down, go right ahead.” 

“Babe, don’t push my buttons.” 

“I’m getting really scared, yeah.” 

Dylan smiled, and I risked another short glance to his eyes. They looked warm, open and happy. 

“Different question, the fuck’s goin’ on between you and Jay?” he asked suddenly, tearing me out of my silent pondering. 

“Huh?” I now felt safe in looking him in the eye completely. There was nothing to hide from this point on. 

“C’mon, I haven’t seen him look at a girl longer than it takes to get her naked and into his bed for ‘bout three years,” he said, his smile suddenly turning from friendly to shit-eating. “You’re getting’ the dude’s panties in a twist.” 

“Quit trying to sound like a gangster, Dyl, we both know you’re from the suburbs,” I said, skillfully avoiding having to reply to his statement. 

“Are you dodging my question, babe?” 

“Call me ‘babe’ again and say goodbye to your manhood,” I said sharply, causing Dylan to raise his arms in defeat. 

“Calm your tits, Jade. And stop trying to avoid what I just said and tell me what the deal is with you and the J-Dog.” He raised his eyebrows.

“Please don’t call him J-Dog, it sounds disgusting.” 

“Jade!” he thundered, earning a few odd looks from the people scattered through the restaurant. 

“Alright, alright. There’s no ‘deal’,” I said, maybe a little too briskly, “we just don’t like each other. If he looks at me any more than he looks at any other woman, that’s only ‘cause he’s never seen a pair of boobs without silicone in his life.” I tried, I tried really hard, to say it like I didn’t care one bit, like what Jorel did could not concern me any less, but the words came out sounding rather surprised and slightly kicked-puppy-style. 

Dylan snickered, raising his eyebrows even higher. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?” he said. He didn’t sound nasty or condescending, simply amused. I decided that I liked Dylan. Like you’d like a best friend, if we’re really nitpicking here. 

“I do,” I replied, perhaps a little too quickly. “I mean, what else would be there?” 

“The fact that he so obviously wants to get with you, it hurts.” 

“Come again?” 

“Ah, for you? Always, baby,” he breathed lowly, wiggling his eyebrows in mock-flirtation. 

I didn’t react, merely rolled my eyes, which he replied with a simple smirk – his trademark, so it seemed. 

“You like the guy, don’t you?” he asked, winking at me suggestively. 

“Okay, I think I’ve had enough for the day. I got school tomorrow, let’s hit the road.” 

He laughed good-naturedly and chucked a wad of dollar bills onto the table. I tried to protest, but he shrugged it off with a mumble of ‘it’s my mama’s money anyway’ and I decided to drop it, sensing his unwillingness to push the topic. 

We got in the car and started driving, soft music playing from the speakers. I didn’t recognize the artist, but the beat was somewhat good, so I quickly turned the volume up – only to furrow my eyebrows suddenly. 

“I know that voice,” I said, looking at Dylan to tell me whose it was. This was probably some band I had listened to long time ago and had not remembered after that – even though I very hardly tended to listen to rap at all. 

“You would, wouldn’t you?” he said, throwing me a shit-eating grin and restarting the song completely. 

I raised my eyebrows and listened more closely to the sounds filling the confined space. It was a flat, generic beat, adorned with a soft melody that didn’t sound like much of anything. Musically, this wasn’t a particularly great number. When the singer started off, I yet again had this odd feeling of knowing who it was – a nasal edge to it, breathy and barely heaving itself above the background noise. And processed to death, honestly. 

However, after the first verse and second chorus, the singer quieted down to make room for a rapper. 

Realization hit me in the face like a sledgehammer when I heard the rapper claiming his place in the song by the name ‘J-Dog’. 

“This is Jorel,” I said quietly, more to myself than to Dylan. 

“She does have ears!” he exclaimed sarcastically. 

I didn’t reply, simply tried to make out a coherent lyrical concept in the jumbled mumble of name-dropping and generic party lyrics. I was in the process of reaching up to turn this bullshit off when suddenly, the feel of the song changed. 

Jorel’s voice turned desperate all of a sudden, cracking and breaking like he was about to cry or scream or punch walls or pull out his hair in an attempt to ease the invisible pain he felt. 

‘fuck the pain away, make it through the day,’ he repeated over and over again. 

It sounded so…so haunted, like he was genuinely speaking the truth. And I suddenly listened to him from an entirely new perspective. Jorel wasn’t doing this because he wanted to – no person in their right mind would enjoy partying to the extent of it being their entire life, no one would like to have their life be one entire big party. He was quite literally fucking the pain away. Pain caused by what, only heaven could know.

However, this still didn’t change the fact that he was a gigantic douchebag and I still couldn’t fucking stand him. And if I sounded like a spiteful child, that would be none of your business. 

“This is decent,” I said finally, when the last few sounds had faded into silence. 

“It’s fuckin’ ace,” said Dylan, looking at me across the console, prompting a simple eye-roll. 

“Whatever you say, Alvarez.” 

Another song started up but this time it was a somewhat easy-going Snoop Dogg remix. I wasn’t a big fan of electronic music, but at least this didn’t raise as many questions. 

When George had told me that he had started a band and was going to ‘make it big with this one’, I had merely raised my eyebrows and mentally given him three weeks to break them up and start another one. But now that I had heard their song in a recorded version, it all made it seem more real. It truly made me miss my own band back in New Jersey – even though I knew that we were broken up and beyond repair.

-

After the thunderstorm incident, Jorel and I had taken to going at each other full force. He had continued making up creative new ways to make me feel like either killing myself or gutting him with the shards of a broken beer bottle while I simply retaliated for what he threw at me (or so I said when George glared or asked me ‘what the f-hell was going on?’).

One morning however, we had taken it a little too far: I had been on edge all day because I was busy preparing for an exam (graduation was creeping nearer and nearer) and on top of that, Amy had decided to start constantly bugging me about talking to Jorel about her. Therefore, the air in the living room was tense during the afternoon. Jorel was leaning nonchalantly against the kitchen counter, having his presumably twenty-ninth coffee of the day and texting on his sidekick while I was sat on the couch. Suddenly, an awful crashing sound rang through the apartment. 

My head whipped around, scanning the room for the culprit responsible for the disruptive noise. Jorel was still standing there, although he had snapped his gaze to the floor where the shards of a coffee mug lay scattered all over the carpet (if the tattered rag even counted as a carpet – maybe ‘rug’ is a better word). I rolled my eyes and proceeded to avert my attention when something suddenly caught my eye. A large red heart, the remnants of an ‘I (heart) New Jersey’ writing… 

“Jorel,” I pressed through clenched teeth. “Is that _my_ mug?”  
He looked up from where he had been scrolling through his shitty Nokia sidekick and gave a simple, disinterested shrug. 

“Wait until your Momma George gets home, he’ll clean it up for you.” 

“You know what?” I said, swiftly jumping up and taking a quick step toward him. “Fuck you, that’s what.” 

“Oh, babe, all you had to do was ask.” 

I could feel my temples pulsing with anger. “You’re pretty fucking cocky for a person that admits they ‘fuck the pain away’ on a recorded audio on MySpace which, y’know, everyone can hear,” I snapped without really thinking. 

“Stalking me already, sweetheart?” Jorel taunted, pushing himself off the counter and straightening his shoulders. He looked way more intimidating now that he was standing there with his full size, but I wasn’t going to cave in. Therefore, I pushed my spine upward as well, trying to stare him in the eyes even though I was at least three inches smaller than him. 

“Yeah, ‘cause your life is just that interesting to me.” I narrowed my eyes. “And your charms are absolutely irresistible.” My tone was flat and sarcastic, but Jorel was definitely not going to let that stop him. 

“Oh, if you wanted me to fuck you so bad, all you had to do was ask,” he mocked. He was wearing a look on his face which some people might have perceived as seductive or attractive while I found it downright predatory and absolutely despicable – much like Jorel himself. 

“Why are you so fixated on me presumably wanting to sleep with you? We both know that’s a big pile of crap.” 

“But do we?” He took a step toward me. “You look like the type of girl that opens her legs willingly for any guy who even looks at her the right way.” 

“Well, if that were correct, and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’d be wide open for you, wouldn’t I?” A few seconds passed until I realized what I’d just said. “If you, uh, if you’d have looked at me the right way, that is.” 

“Oh, honey, you’re transparent. I can see it in your eyes, you want me _bad_.” 

“Oh, fuck you, Jorel. Even if I did find you attractive, no way in hell I’d fall for this. I’m not gonna let your ass use me like a fucking toy and then throw me away like I’m nothing. But thanks for the offer.” In another burst of desperate need to hurt him somehow, I added, “And by the way, it’s _badly_ , not _bad_. Maybe read something other than the super bowl results?” 

“Whatever you say, princess,” he said with an evil smirk. 

The word hit me like a whiplash. “Quit fucking calling me that,” I snarled. 

That being said, I didn’t give him the chance to say anything else and simply grabbed my stuff and made for George’s (my) room. 

Even three hours after it had happened, I had not felt quite ready to reemerge. George had since returned and walked in to earn himself a death glare and a few snappy answers. After that, I had immediately developed a guilty conscience and was therefore currently curled up on the couch beside my brother, my head resting on a pillow in his lap and him carding his hand through my hair. 

“So, Jade,” he said.

I hummed, not taking my eyes off the TV.

“Tell me a story or something.” 

“What are you, five?” I snorted. 

“Well, we haven’t seen each other in nine years. I’m pretty sure there’s some shit I haven’t heard.” 

“Probably,” I replied, and pondered for a while. It was one of these moments where you know you have millions of things to say but the second you try to put them into words, they vanish into thin air. 

“Tell me about your band,” said George finally. 

I gulped. “I’d rather not,” I said. “It’s still kind of a touchy subject for me.” 

“Why’s that?” 

I bit my lip. I probably should tell him about what had happened – he was my brother and I was supposed to trust him unconditionally, but somehow it still felt odd to open up to him after all these years. Finally, however, I decided to simply get it over with and take the first step to finally being siblings rather than distant acquaintances. 

“We broke up,” I said eventually. I noticed that my own voice sounded a little odd and pressed, like I was scared or something. “They were pretty mad when I told them I was leaving New Jersey,” I continued, “One of them, my boyfriend Val – well, ex-boyfriend – he was especially mad. Said all these things; that I was leaving them now that we’d gained a little bit of local recognition, that I was only going to LA in hopes of boosting my career alone or some shit.” I raised my head off the pillow and turned to look at my brother, who was staring at me with an expression somewhere between awkward and angry. 

“And then my best friend Sara went apeshit as well. She basically started a rumor at my old school that I’d slept with a teacher to pass my Advanced English class.” My jaw tightened at the thought. 

“Well, wouldn’t put it past you,” said a mean voice from behind us. 

I whipped my head around to glare at Jorel – but George had it under control. 

“Say something like that to or about my sister again, Decker,” he snapped, “And you won’t have to worry about finding girls to sleep with anymore ‘cause you won’t have anything to fuck them _with_.” 

Jorel shrugged, and left the room through the front door, presumably to go bitch about me to Aron. Aron, who had taken an instant dislike to me and was now taking every given opportunity to inform everyone in his near vicinity that I was an absolute bitch and that I was trying to ruin his best friend’s life by simply existing. Aron, who I hated with about the power of a thousand suns. 

To be honest, more than once since I had arrived in Los Angeles had I found myself caught up in an inner debate on whether Jorel or Aron was worse – I had come to the conclusion that they were pretty much tied. Jorel because of his passive-aggressive demeanor (even though most of the time it wasn’t particularly passive) and Aron because of his childish bitchiness. 

“Anyway, it all became a total shit show when I left, and I’m honestly glad that I’m here now,” I said, giving George a smile. As I spoke, I realized that I was, in fact, speaking the truth: I liked it here, as much as I hated Jorel and Aron and as much as Amy’s disgusting crush on the former pissed me off. All these things were little in comparison to what I’d left behind in the suburbs. 

“Well, I’m really glad you’re here as well,” he replied, smiling at me warmly. 

I cuddled into his arms and that was the way we spent the rest of the evening; curled up on the couch and watching a crappy television movie.


	10. Birthday Baby

I woke up at around six, staring at the ceiling and praying for whatever God was on duty right now to simply let the rain come down and destroy me. An existential crisis was hovering above me like a cloud that was heavy with rain, only waiting to burst and unleash its contents right…well, right on me. A headache was pounding against my temples, courtesy of the moody weather – only a few days ago, a thunderstorm had shaken me to my very core, cooling the air down to an almost normal winter temperature, but now it had snapped back right into this abomination the Californians called ‘winter’; including sweater weather and idiotically warm gusts of wind. 

Still, the light dipping in through the bare windows was gloomy and seemed to be foreshadowing some kind of horrible day – a day which I knew was only going to get worse from there. 

So by now, it was safe to say that I was the _definition_ of pissed off. 

What was definitely not helping was the fact that George was standing in the doorframe, holding a chocolate cake with lopsided icing and a few candles on it, grinning from ear to ear and about to open his mouth to sing happy birthday. 

“Please don’t,” I wheezed. I was twisting my face into an obviously fake smile as I dragged my tired limbs out of bed and toward my brother. With a painful pang, I remembered how my dad had used to the exact same thing on every one of my birthdays: Wake me up at six with a huge cake and have me eat at least three pieces before dropping me off at school. 

When I had gotten the new phone last year, I had been so overjoyed that I had smiled for eight hours straight, right up until I had thrown it into my handbag and the weight of my English textbook had crushed the screen. 

Realization stabbed me like a sawblade, cutting clean through my skin and bones until it reached the bottom of my chest where it stayed, icy cold spreading from the metal. I was shaking almost violently and before I could even reach George, I tripped and came tumbling toward the floor.   
I hadn’t realized that my face had contorted into an ugly, grief-ridden mask and tears were crashing downward like small waterfalls. My brother seemed so utterly helpless as he reached out to catch my clumsy form, pushing me back down on my bed where he let my head rest in his lap. 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and I suddenly noticed that he had been saying it more than once now; that he had been apologizing profusely the second he had seen my face. 

I only shook my head, curling deeper around his big, bulky form and pulling my legs up to hug them to my body. 

I wanted to speak, to tell him that it was okay, that he could not have known and that I truly appreciated how nice he was being – but the only thing leaving my mouth was a loud, ugly sob. It sounded like something out of a horror movie, choked-off and desperate, as he kept patting my head, carding his hands through my hair like he had used to when we were kids. 

We sat there for a long time; me letting my grief run free and him simply being there, the rock I so desperately needed in times of flood. After some time, I felt safe to speak. 

“Dad used to do that,” I said, “every year.” My voice came out as a whisper, cracked and rough. “He’d” – hiccup – “bake an ugly-but-delicious cake and bring it to my bed.” 

“I remember,” said George simply. 

“It’s really” – hiccup – “nice of you to do this for me.” I hiccupped again, quite hysterically. 

George snickered slightly. “You always used to do this too.” 

At my incredulous expression, he elaborated. “Not cry on your birthday – shit, it’s your eighteenth – but hiccup like crazy when you were crying. And then,” he smiled at me fondly, “I always started laughing and then you were cracking up and then you’d have stopped crying.” 

I smiled at the memory. When George looked at me that second, I saw a glint of the fourteen-year-old scrawny boy with his nose in the John Milton epic rather than the twenty-three-year-old drunk-ass – a welcome change. This was the first time in nine years that he had truly felt like my brother and not just some stranger that I was forced to pretend to be siblings with. It gave me hope that, somewhere buried beneath this carefully placed mask of barely concealed aggression and badly concealed depression, he was still family. My brother – my brother whom I had been closest to in the whole wide world at some point. 

Unknowingly, a soft smile had started creeping upon my face, causing George to retaliate with a smug grin. 

“The good ol’ days, huh?” I asked, now finally feeling calm enough to breathe normally. 

Sadness was still buried deep in my heart, but I somehow knew that George would never willingly leave me alone in this world. 

“Yeah,” he said. “You know what? I’ll let you ditch school for the day – only ‘cause it’s your birthday – and we’ll do something, anything.” 

“Don’t you have work or something?” I asked with a laugh. 

“Dude, my _band_ is my work,” he replied. 

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, peeling my body out of the awkward embrace. “You’ll make it big by rehearsing once a week and mostly just having Jorel yell like a little kid.” 

“Don’t give him so much shit,” said George, frowning slightly. “Guy’s got his demons too.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure that finding a girl he hasn’t slept with yet every time he wants to get his dick wet is a real struggle.” Sarcasm was underlining my every word as I scrambled off the bed and toward my closet where I gathered a pile of only-halfway-mismatched articles of clothing. 

“Now shoo, I need to put on a pair of pants,” I said, motioning for him to leave the room. 

George shrugged and left the room, picking up the cake on the way out. 

I tried to make myself look at least halfway presentable (y’know, pretending that I had not just cried my eyes out like a little baby and my brother had had to comfort me into being able to speak actual, real-life words) by putting on my fresh clothes and even slapping on some celebratory makeup. When I entered the living room, George was on the phone with someone (presumably his boss) and arguing quietly. Jorel was nowhere to be seen which filled me with an odd mixture of relief and disappointment – wait, disappointment? I didn’t even _like_ the guy! What business did I have wanting him to be around? Especially on my birthday! He’d probably only tell me that ‘now I was finally legal’. 

I walked over to the kitchen counter and looked at the cake. It was chocolate – my favorite – with greasy chocolate frosting and a sloppy ‘18’ painted on it with sugary icing. 

I got myself a piece, smiling at George widely in the process and sat down on the sofa, quietly starting to eat the cake. It left an odd aftertaste and sort of gave the impression that it consisted of mainly butter and chocolate – but that did not bother me one bit. 

“The more chocolate, the better, right?” said George, plopping down next to me with a slice of his own. 

“This is amazing, George. Thank you,” I smiled, pressing a short kiss to his cheek. 

He grinned back, toothy and happy, and I was suddenly insanely confident that the two of us could restore our brother-sister relationship to its former glory. All the worries that some kinds of porcelain could possibly be fixed, but never mended, were washed away with a simple smile. 

I had somehow learned the hard way that this might have applied to friends and acquaintances, but not family. 

We silently finished the cake and then passed the time with some meaningless chatter until the clock struck eleven when suddenly George got up and told me to put on some shoes and sunglasses. I raised my eyebrows at the request but complied nonetheless, making my way down the stairs minutes later. 

The car journey was quite long compared to my usual way to school, but somehow, we made it to a parking lot somewhere in the outskirts of Los Angeles, where I raised my eyebrows again. 

“Are you going to murder me now?” 

“Yeah, Jade, I’m gonna murder you in the middle of the city.” 

For the first time, I looked around to find myself in the parking lot to a slightly shabby but otherwise quite nice-looking diner, complete with flashing neon signs advertising ‘fresh coca cola’ and ‘the best burgers in town!’. I immediately felt welcome and at home when we entered the building to see a room full of retro metal tables and brightly colored linoleum floors. 

“This looks exactly like…” 

“Monroe’s, in Brooklyn.” 

I turned to see George smiling at me, a little smug and mostly just happy. Monroe’s was a small diner back in New Jersey. Our parents had used to take us there almost every weekend; right after going to church. In a short moment of insanity, I wondered whether our mother had been drunk during these beautiful Sundays. Whether she had been drunk putting us to bed many hours later, whether she had been drunk in the morning when making pancakes in her bright green apron with cherries on it.

George steered me over to a cherry red booth. 

“How did you find this place?” I asked, a sad smile on my face. 

“Jay grew up near here,” he said. 

I nodded and decided to just let it go by unnoticed, sliding into the booth opposite of George. 

“I haven’t been in one of these in, like, a year,” I confessed when I picked up the worn out menu. ‘Burgers’ were listed extensively, the different kinds elaborated neatly beneath the notice that every meal, unless requested otherwise, came with a side of homemade steak fries. 

“We were here a lot in high school,” said George. “Jay and me. He lived nearby and since I didn’t really enjoy being at home, I came over to his a lot.” He sounded sad. 

I suddenly had an image of George in my head, returning home after a long day of school and hanging out with his friends afterwards, to find our mother curled up on the couch with the liquor bottle still open on the coffee table. I pictured him carefully taking the bottle away from her and putting it back in the cabinet, softly pressing a goodnight kiss to her forehead, throwing a blanket across her skinny body and then going to sleep quietly, trying to numb down the anger and sadness over what his mother had become with his two best friends: Once a bottle of pills and once a bottle of gin.

“It was back when he wasn’t a bitter bitch,” George continued, oblivious to my sudden change in his expression. He seemed hazy, like he wasn’t really talking to me, rather just pondering on his memories. “Back when he wasn’t absolutely fixated on hating all of the female population.” 

I perked up. 

“What?” 

“What?” repeated George, snapping out of his daze. 

“You were implying that Jorel was something other than a misogynistic dickbag at some point of his life,” I explained, “which, of course, raised a lot of confusion over here.” I gave a stupid little wave. 

“Nevermind, Jade. Anyway, what did you wanna do tonight? Hit up the Funny Man and catch a movie or something?” 

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t hood me, George. What happened to Jorel?” 

He suddenly looked insanely uncomfortable. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell, sorry.” 

I simply rolled my eyes. 

“Just spit it out. What did he do, fuck another guy’s girl?” 

George laughed. “The other way round, I’d say.” 

I raised my eyebrows again, inching a bit closer. “He got cheated on? That’s why he hates everything with a vagina? That’s strong, even for that guy.” 

“No,” said George. He looked harried, constantly checking if his roommate could magically appear behind him and beat him to a pulp when he told me what was going on. “Okay, you need to promise me that you won’t taunt him with it; won’t tell anyone and that you’ll just generally keep your mouth shut on this sh-stuff.” 

“I swear,” I replied, stretching out my pinky finger. After a moment of hesitation, he begrudgingly hooked his own pinky with mine, staring into my eyes intently as I silently gave my promise. 

“Alright.” He cleared his throat. “When we were in high school, Jay was dating this girl, Jenna. She was…not a good person, to be honest. None of us could stand her, but we pretended to love her for his sake. ‘Cause, man, dude was _whipped_. Carried her books for her, took her out on fancy dates, all ‘cause she was a middle class white girl and he was just…an idiot, born in the shady part of Hollywood without any ambition to get out. But ‘cause of her, he suddenly did. He wanted to get out, wanted to do something with his life and all that sh-stuff.” 

I raised my eyebrows. “He did?” 

“Hell yeah he did. They started dating when they were fourteen. Dated for a full two years, they did. She was his first love, his first kiss, his first time. 

And then one day, he went over to her house on his birthday, with a vase full of red roses – he got _her_ something for _his_ birthday – and her Mom let him into Jenna’s room ‘cause she was stupid. Of course, it happened like it had to, and he walked into the room to see Jenna in bed with none other than Aron, his best friend.” 

I sucked in a breath. “That explains a lot.” 

“That’s not even it.” 

“Please tell me it gets better from then on?” 

“Oh shit no. Aron and Jenna, they started dating. They talked about being in love; went to all the parties together, rubbed salt into the wound in every possible way. And Jay went down without a fight. Stopped caring about school, started drinking, started smoking and doing all fifty shades of drugs, started getting with the wrong crowds. He was involved in a lot of gang business, saw people get murdered and all that sh-stuff. I think the worst moment I remember was when he came to my house, half-beaten to death. Split lip, bloody nose, the whole nine. And when I asked him what had happened, he just said that he hadn’t passed.” George rubbed his hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose to ease the tension. “And that’s when sh-stuff started getting real fu-messed up.” 

By this point, I wasn’t sure whether I even wanted to hear the rest of it. But from then on, it could surely only get better, right? 

“The principal of our high school had no choice but to expel him and he didn’t even care. Drunk all day, high all night. I think he fucked himself through the entire Orange County.” I gulped, trying to ease the lump in my throat, even though I knew it was in vain. “And his parents decided they’d had enough by the time he was seventeen. They didn’t want to watch that sh-stuff anymore, so they put an end to it. His Mom, you should know, was an absolute hippy, didn’t really believe in the public education system and was stoked when he stopped applying himself at school. But that was the one time that she suddenly turned not-hippy on him: They sent him to a bootcamp down in New Mexico where he was drilled into…whatever.”   
I was silent. This was the absolutely ultimate example of ‘why not to judge a book by its cover’. I honestly felt sick at how badly I had been treating Jorel just because of the sheer number of things he had been through in his short life. 

“He never told me what happened down there.” George had an empty look in his eyes. “But when he came back, he was…that. We somehow managed to patch our friendship back together, he even made up with Aron, and now he’s trying to live while not letting anyone around him know that he actually possesses the ability to feel. He’s cold and angry and passive-aggressive, but honestly – at least he’s alive.” 

Both of us were silent for a little while, me absolutely stunned and shocked while George had taken to regarding the world outside the window with an empty, traumatized look on his face. Guilt was rushing through my blood like acid, spreading further with every heartbeat. It felt like it was a certain kind of poison that had been injected with George’s words and now wouldn’t leave again. Was there an antidote? Probably not. 

“So now that I ruined the mood,” said George, “let’s talk something happy.” 

The rest of my birthday was spent eating our dripping, greasy burgers and reminiscing fondly. With every word we spoke, I was more certain that George was still my brother. 

We were walking up the stairs to the apartment when I finally noticed something was off. He seemed so oddly fidgety, like something was about to happen, and the only possibility I could think of was that he was scared I would have another noisy fight with Jorel. Therefore, I put on my best game face and tried to avoid thinking about the inevitable pity I would feel at the sight of my brother’s roommate. It wasn’t like I now considered him weak or any more emotional than before, but things had gotten clear enough for me not to want to get on his bad side anymore. Probably because I now knew that he had enough on his plate without me taking every single opportunity to take the piss out of him. 

The door creaked open hesitantly and George went in first, timidly passing the sill. And then I realized that I had been very wrong about the reasons for his atypical behavior. 

“Surprise!” a group of people exclaimed. 

I reached up to rub my palms over my eyes, but sure enough, there they were. 

Dylan, sitting next to Matt on the sofa and wearing a shit-eating grin. Jordon leaning against the wall next to Amy and Mike (who was a good friend of Amy’s and always unsubtly eyeing my ass). And of course, not to forget Jorel, sipping a beer, wearing a pointedly neutral expression. 

It didn’t take long for a slightly hysterical but nonetheless happy laugh to leave my mouth as I looked at the group of my brother’s friends that I had adopted as well, along with the few people at my school I could actually talk to. Aron’s absence neither fazed nor disappointed me, and I was truly moved that all of them had taken their time to come here and celebrate with me. 

George was smiling tentatively as I went to give him a hug, which he returned, sighing in relief. 

“This is amazing,” I whispered into his chest as he squeezed me harder, pressing a small kiss to the top of my head. “Thank you.” 

When I pulled away, I noticed the soft music playing in the background – it was AFI, for God’s sake – and the counter stacked with alcoholic beverages and bowls of chips. 

“So now, I know you’re only eighteen and I was against letting you drink, but the guys told me that I had better teach you how to drink properly myself before you go out and do something stupid wasted off your face,” George explained. 

“Dude,” I said, snickering slightly, “I was in an underground band for three years, do you really think I’ve never drunk?” 

I heard a laugh bubble up right next to me and looked to find Dylan smiling down at me warmly, surprisingly sober and calm-looking. He bent down to give me a warm hug. 

“Happy birthday, kid,” he said. 

“You’re one fucking year older than me, you idiot,” I laughed. 

“Yeah, but that’s still 365 days.” 

“It’s actually less than 365 days, Dylan.” 

“Just shut up.” 

The next one to wish me a happy birthday was Matt, who immediately folded me into a smoke-scented hug once I thanked him shyly.   
Jordon patted my shoulder and pressed a light kiss to my cheek. 

“Congrats, kid,” he said. 

“Keep your hands off my sister,” George yelled from the other side of the room where he had been busy mixing drinks. I reached out, grabbing the glass from his hands when he walked over and took the first sip of the vodka orange, throwing my brother an amused eye-roll in the process. 

Amy gave me a long, desperate hug which conveniently placed her ass directly in the line of sight of one Jorel Decker, who was now looking over with lazy interest, shamelessly letting his eyes roam down my friend’s legs. I was in the process of working up a scowl to throw at him, but then I remembered what a poor bastard he was and let it slide. After Amy came Mike, who let his hands linger on my back a little longer than necessary, prompting an almost violent glare from George. 

I pulled away quickly, if only to save Mike’s ass, and finally sat myself down on the couch between Dylan and Amy.


	11. Poise and Rationality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is taken from "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" by P!atD

With idle conversation and casual drink-sipping, I had turned into an intoxicated idiot somewhere between my third screwdriver and midnight. I had not been lying when I had told George that being in a band in New Jersey sometimes granted you illegal access to alcoholic beverages, but I had always been a lightweight and drinking had never brought me much personal satisfaction. Add that to the liberal amounts of vodka Jordon tended to use when mixing a drink, and I was pretty much off my face by the time he and Matt started bidding everyone goodbye, leaving me wedged between Amy and Mike, who was getting awfully clingy. George, however, was not there to play the chaperone as he was pretty much shitfaced by now as well, holding on to Dylan like he was his last saving grace. 

“I’ll put him to bed,” announced Dylan finally, helping my brother up and steering him in the vague direction of his (my) bedroom. Soon after, he announced his departure as well, offering to take Amy and Mike home. 

Mike went reluctantly while Amy decided she would rather stay a little longer and catch a cab sometime later. I refrained from telling her that I wasn’t going to be of much use to her now that I was practically shitfaced because even my drunken mind could process that she was definitely not staying for me. 

She had been all over Jorel ever since both of them had chugged their first drinks, showering him with compliments about his bulging biceps and beautiful tattoos. Surprisingly however, he didn’t seem very interested as he kept pushing her hands off his chest and neck, finally escalating to telling her that she should go home because she was wasted. 

“I can just stay here, can’t I?” she asked in a tone she herself might have perceived to be seductive or flirtatious or something – but even I could sense that she was being stupid, and I was way drunker than both of them. 

As the scene in front of me unfolded, I went to get myself another drink and the bowl of chips that had been sitting abandoned on the kitchen counter. It was considerably harder than I remembered to place one foot in front of the other, but I somehow made it to the other end of the room. Trying to catch my breath, I plopped down on one of the chairs, not even bothering to check for any possible disgusting substance splattered all over it. Cleaning was still a concept neither Jorel nor George had really gotten around to grasping intellectually, but now that I was drunk, everything seemed to be fine. 

“No, you can’t,” said Jorel, once more shrugging off her hands from where she had closed them in a near-death grip on his forearm. 

“Why not?” she asked. 

“Because I don’t want to fuck you,” replied Jorel bluntly. 

For some reason, I found that hilarious. My laugh was too loud and out-of-place in the half-empty apartment. 

“Why not?” she repeated. 

Jorel groaned, getting off the couch and staring to walk toward the front door. I almost thought he was going to leave, but then he simply held the door open, motioning for Amy to get out. 

“I don’t want to leave yet,” she said, her big brown eyes wet and watery as she stared at my brother’s roommate. 

“Well that’s bad fuckin’ luck for you,” he replied harshly, gesturing again. 

Reluctantly, she picked herself up off the sofa, only stopping to give me a hard glare on her way out. 

“Why the fuck are you not helping me?” she snapped. 

“’Cause I really wanna sleep now, and tha’s not gonna happen if you stay.” I smiled with a bit of difficulty, the words having exhausted me more than I had assumed before. 

With an annoyed huff, Amy stumbled out of the apartment, Jorel slamming the door shut behind her. 

“You,” I started, “turnin’ down sex. Never thought I’d see tha’.” My voice was slurred and the amounts of drinks I had had were so painfully apparent that I considered locking myself in the bathroom to sober up, if only so I would not have to face Jorel in a state like that. 

“And there I went thinking you’d quit giving me shit once you were drunk.” He had not had that much; he was still speaking in remarkably complex sentences and the basic idea of enunciating had yet to leave his conscious mind, which could only mean that I was going to feel really, really embarrassed the next morning. The only saving grace was that Jorel surely had a higher tolerance for alcohol, which could mean that he was way drunker than he was letting on and would lose consciousness soon. 

“’m not drunk,” I insisted. It was like my mind was detached from my body at the moment: I could see what was going on and process it like a normal person, but other than that, nothing worked. My hands and voice belonged to a different person – a blackout-drunk one. 

“Yes, you are,” said Jorel, plopping down on the sofa. I got up and stumbled my way over to sit next to him – for whatever reason – only to try to get back up. 

“What are you doing?” he asked. 

“Forgot my drink,” I muttered. I failed at the task of putting one foot in front of the other. A hand gripped my arm, pulling me back down. 

“You’ve had enough for tonight, Jade,” said Jorel. 

“Why do…why d’you care?” I got out with a bit of difficulty. 

“’Cause George is my best friend and if I let you die of alcohol poisoning, he’ll probably punch me in the face.” 

“I wanna go to bed,” I said. 

“Well, you can’t, ‘cause George is in your bed. You’ll have to take the couch.” 

I swear to God, everything I said and did from then on is solely to blame on the alcohol. 

“Or your bed,” a voice said, and it sounded suspiciously like my own even though I was completely sure that I had not given my mouth permission to speak.

Jorel’s head shot up, and suddenly, he was looking at me. His stare was so intense that I simply had to avert my eyes despite the fact that, when drunk, I didn’t mind eye contact at all. 

He didn’t say anything, though, which caused me to awkwardly scoot further away from him, almost slipping off the couch in the process. Intoxication was making it hard for me to think about anything other than my basic needs of food, sleep and peeing. And, oh, reproduction. Never forget that. And God knows I was not thirsty, but when I was drunk, I was almost reminded painfully quickly of my usually so perfectly concealed yearning for physical closeness – the kind I had been lacking ever since Val had called me a ‘self-righteous cunt’. 

My drink was still across the room and even though every last rational bone in my body screamed for me to leave it there, I picked myself off the couch and started haphazardly stumbling over; my head spinning in dizzy circles from the movement. 

I told myself over and over again that I could do it; just set one foot in front of the other. Just walk, walk and focus only on where you’re going and what you want. However, the dizziness in my head was way stronger than my determination to keep moving and therefore, it didn’t take long for me to slip and come stumbling toward the definite direction of the floor. 

I never hit the ground, though. For a second, I wondered whether I had had a moment of clarity and saved myself by throwing my own feet beneath me, but then I noticed the smell of cologne whisking its way into my nose.

Jorel’s strong arms were around me, holding up my useless body and steering me back toward the couch. 

“I said you’ve had enough,” he said, and I really, really hoped that he was drunker than he was letting on. 

“Fuck you,” I blurted out, my mouth once again working faster than my brain.   
Jorel simply sighed and helped me sit back down on the couch, where my stupid traitor body immediately reacted to his touch, warming up where he was putting his hands and scooting closer to him. 

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked, having to stifle a startled laugh. 

“I’m alone,” I replied simply, crawling closer to him. 

For some reason, he let me cuddle up into his lap with only a pillow parting me from his crotch and my body folded up beside him so he could softly rest his right hand on my shoulder, moving it in slow, reassuring circles. The last drinks I had chugged were now hitting me with full force, their effects eventually reducing me to…whatever I was at the moment. 

“Val in’t talkin’ to me,” I slurred, as if that should clear anything up for Jorel, who most likely didn’t know who Val even was. “Din’t even bother t’break up wi’ me.” I laughed a drunken, cynical laugh, almost choking on the sound in the process. “So technically, ‘m still ina relationship.” 

“I’m pretty sure that if he hasn’t talked to you ever since you left New Jersey, you’re broken up.” 

“I know,” I whined. “Bu’ I ‘on’t know wha’ I did wrong.” I had always known that alcohol tended to loosen my tongue impossible, but this had reached pathetic extents. There I was, fucked off my face, pouring out my heart to a guy who absolutely despised me and probably had a ton of other shit to deal with. Great going, Ragan. 

“You don’t always have to do something wrong for a girlfriend or boyfriend to be shitty to you in return.” I looked up to see him smiling sadly while continuing to absentmindedly draw invisible patterns on the exposed skin of my shoulder. 

“Yeah bu’ we were in a ban’ together,” I said. I could feel wetness starting to coat the corners of my eyes, but luckily, no tears had been spilled yet. I planned to keep it that way too. 

“Well,” Jorel replied patiently, “that doesn’t mean that men can’t be men.” 

I laughed at that, positively startling him. “But…but you’re a man too!” I exclaimed, laughing some more. 

Even Jorel let out a short chuckle at that, moving his hand to run it through my hair and keep it on my cheek. Oh _God_ , what the fuck was happening here? 

“Yeah,” he said quietly, intently staring into the depth of my eyes. 

Jorel had pretty eyes, I noticed then. I know that I had realized that he was pretty hot the first time I had entered the apartment and seen him try to get rid of Amy like she was a cockroach under his kitchen counter, but I had never seen how beautiful he truly was. For some reason, only after George had told me this story I had realized just how strong his roommate truly was. He had lived through hell and more when his girlfriend had decided to run off with his best friend, but he had not broken. Well, he had, but he had somehow put himself back together afterwards, which was even more impressive. 

“Y’know,” I said, “I don’ know why I don’ like ya.” 

He chuckled softly. “Probably ‘cause you’ve seen how I usually treat women.” 

I nodded zealously. “Prolly.” 

We were silent for a while, him regarding my face with concealed interest and me trying not to squirm beneath his intense gaze. It took me about ten minutes to muster up the nerve to softly put my hand on his shoulder and five more to move it to his cheek, feeling the raspy stubble there. 

“You’re pretty,” I said, to which he replied with a laugh. 

“A lot of guys would be offended if you told them that.” He stroked his thumb over my cheek. 

“Why are you bein’ so nice, Jay?” I asked suddenly. 

“I’m being nice on the off chance that you won’t remember this tomorrow.” The smile on his face was sad. 

I frowned, puzzled. 

“Why would you-”

I never got to finish that question. 

Jorel cut me off with one simple motion. 

He leaned down and rested his mouth on mine, silencing all sorts of surfacing doubts and stifling my upcoming protest in the process. 

Against my better judgement, I let it happen – hell, I even participated – for I wound my arms around his neck, pulling his body closer to mine in the same motion. 

I couldn’t say how long we lay there, kissing and enjoying the feel of our bodies molding together like we’d been made to complement like pieces of a puzzle. Even though the kiss was awkward, drunk and clumsy, all clinking teeth and unwanted bites, I somehow felt like this was where I belonged; this was what I wanted. It was hot and heady and I, fuck, I couldn’t think anymore. Everything was Jorel; loud and silent at the same time as I pulled him closer and pushed him away, all at once. 

I wanted to be closer to Jorel, to have him next to me, as the sun slowly started rising above the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. 

And although I was drunk off my face and would most likely never remember what had happened that night and Jorel was probably counting on that so he would never have to deal with me wanting to be his girlfriend and getting clingy (not that I would ever cling on to _Jorel fucking Decker_ of all people), we were perfect that moment. 

Making out in a way that would certainly be painful to watch in the light of the rising sun of Hollywood, everything else lay forgotten. All the grief and pain in my soul that was making even breathing an impossible challenge and all the anger and hurt inside Jorel’s that was making him bitter and distrustful toward everyone; it was all washed away as we kissed, like tide rolling over a dry beach and taking away all the dirt and carelessly discarded trash. 

I felt Jorel and nothing else; all was Jorel. 

He was the breath in my lungs and the fire in my soul. 

Two broken pieces, suddenly fitting together. 

And for a few moments, everything was perfect.


	12. One Step Closer to the Edge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is taken from "One Step Closer" by Linkin Park

I don’t know at what point I simply passed out, but I did. There were no nightmares, no dreams even, plaguing me as I slept soundly through the hours of dawn. 

Right up until the door to George’s (my) bedroom was slammed open and my brother walked out, startling me to the point where I hit my head on the armrest from going to jerk upward too quickly in order to find out who the intruder was. I blinked sleepily while he was grumbling something about needing another beer. On any other occasion, I would have taken the opportunity to give him shit for being a halfway-there-alcoholic, but now, I was more than agreeable. With a tempestuous grunt, I slid off the couch and started slinking toward my brother, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, searching the cabinets for an aspirin and wearing an expression which spoke of nothing if not complete disaster. 

“I am never letting you near any kind of alcoholic beverage ever again,” he grumbled, shooting me an impressively well-aimed glare. 

“Yes, Mom,” I replied with the same attitude. There was no point in telling him that he had been way drunker than I had been and would possibly ever be in my future life. 

One thing one must not forget, however, is that if you put two Ragans in the same room when it’s early, they’re both tired and hung over, you usually get a fight of almost epic proportions. Neither of us had the decency to try and control our moodiness as we both knew the other would quite probably not bother either, so this was likely going to end in a gigantic fight.

“Shut up,” said George. 

“Shut up,” I mimicked, putting on a fake baby voice. 

“Just put on some clothes, school starts in an hour,” he barked, evidently having none of it today. 

I was simply too tired to argue and therefore I started stumbling over to George’s (my) room and picked up a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt. A trip to the bathroom and a haphazard shower later, I almost felt human enough for school. It only got better from then on as George handed me a peace-offering in form of a steaming hot mug of coffee, which I chugged like my life depended on it (it probably did). 

The drive to my school was short and painless for neither of us wanted to waste their energy on a pointless conversation. My homeroom class was as packed as usual, only one quite familiar face missing from the masses of people: Amy. 

She wasn’t there when I sat down and she especially wasn’t there when I walked to the cafeteria during my lunch period – which soon turned out to be nigh fatal. 

Mike was munching on a sandwich of a quite foreign consistence while telling me a mildly suggestive story about another party he had attended the week prior – one of these absolutely crazy parties that some of the more…wealthy people at our school had thrown. I had heard of these once back in New York, but I had never actually been at one for the popular crowd usually didn’t want to be seen with me. You know, the type of party where there was cocaine just openly lying around in heaps for people’s enjoyment, where alcohol flowed freely and uninhibitedly. The _Wolf of Wall Street_ kind of deal. Never had I had any sort of interest in being there, but Mike seemed keen on explaining, in every tiny detail, how he had managed to nail a girl way out of his league there. 

I left the school building with a weird feeling in my gut that even prompted me to send a quick text to Amy, asking whether she was alright. 

She replied seconds later, telling me that she had had a total blackout and didn’t remember a lot from last night and that she was sorry if she had done anything wildly inappropriate. I only felt bad for a short while after she had told me about her memory loss and I had practically breathed out the ultimate sight of relief. I called her, laughed it off and pointedly did not tell her that I had, in fact, made out with none other than Jorel. 

Now that was something I had successfully tried to avoid for the duration of the day. I had not had much nerve to deal with something like that when I was being plagued by a quite persistent headache, therefore I had chosen to ignore it had ever happened and eventually deal with it some other time. It had worked out fine for me right until I got in the car with Jordon, who was innocently asking me if I had enjoyed my party. 

“Sure,” I said. And it was no lie – I had loved the party. Seeing my brother’s friends who were, apparently, now also my friends was a great thing. It had felt good to talk and laugh with them, and it had felt even better to drink with them. As much as I advocated for healthy coping mechanisms, at some point after the deaths of your one remaining parent and their spouse whom you had only just started to accept, you were entitled to a night of being blackout drunk. And I had had my night, and I was less than willing to repeat it. 

“Dylan said he was coming by later, though he’ll have to leave for band practice in the evening,” said Jordon as he rounded a corner. I would not necessarily claim that I was any better of a driver than him, but he was pumping the gear shift with just a little more force than strictly necessary. Just, you know, saying. 

“That’s cool,” I replied absentmindedly. I had only just realized that it was Friday – since I had ditched school yesterday, it felt kind of like a Monday. Which was great, considering I had two days off now. Which was also awful, considering I had to be in Jorel’s presence more. 

We silently walked up the stairs to the apartment, but before I could jam the key in the lock, I turned to look at Jordon. 

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever really thanked you,” I said in a sudden burst of weakness. 

He raised his eyebrows. “Did I sleep with you and forget about it?” he asked. 

I laughed. “No. Thanks for…everything, I guess. Thanks for the wake-up call back at the beach – I really needed it. Thanks for playing taxi driver all the time; and thanks for putting up with me.” 

Now it was his turn to laugh as he put his large hand on my shoulder. 

“Trust me, Jade, when I say that I would do anything for family.” 

“Family?” 

“You’re George’s sister, and George is my brother. Which makes you my sister. Family.” 

I smiled at him. “You know, you guys are really the best thing that could’ve happened to my brother here,” I confided. I didn’t know why I was being so soft at the moment, but it was probably the afterglow of having seen Jorel’s soft side – which I couldn’t say I disliked, that was for sure. 

Jordon, however, simply grimaced. “This is starting to feel a little too emotional for me,” he announced. “I’m off. Tell you brother he owes me a blowjob.” 

With that, he walked off, leaving me to dread entering my own home.

-

If you are wondering what sort of coping mechanism Jorel and I had resorted to, it would be answered by one simple word: Denial.   
When I entered the living room, he barely looked up from his comfortably seated position on the sofa with his hand strategically placed right next to his crotch. I almost gagged at the sight, while he didn’t even grunt to acknowledge my entrance. 

“Hi,” I tried, timidly. Too timidly to be typical. 

Jorel, though, simply groaned. 

I walked on, setting down my bag and walking over to the fridge, browsing it for something edible. 

“Your brother won’t be home until late,” said Jorel evenly. His voice was bored, like he was reciting something he had learned by heart long ago. “Band practice starts in about three hours so you’ll be on your own ‘til ten or so. Think you can handle that without crying for your mama?” 

I sighed but gave a nod of understanding. 

Nothing whatsoever had changed about the cold indifference he usually treated me with – and I was so, so, so mad at the small spark of disappointment that ignited in my chest. Who was that guy to be the one to kiss me and then pretend that nothing had ever happened? It wasn’t even like he could deny it under the pretense of one of the guys being here and him having to act like nothing had happened, because the apartment was empty save for the two of us. 

So he was only doing this for the sake of being a dick. 

Which, infuriatingly, did not change the yearning disappointment one bit. 

The fridge was, as expected, absolutely empty. Therefore, I decided to wait until Dylan would roll in and then swiftly drag him off to the grocery store to get something other than Chinese takeout or pizza. 

“What, nothing good enough for the princess?” Jorel asked venomously as I set down a gallon of orange juice with a disgusted expression. It had brought back a lot of memories, thank you very much. 

“Just shut up, Jay,” I retorted weakly while pouring myself a glass of water. 

He seemed to sense my exasperation as he got up from the couch and started walking over, his eyes evil as he propped his elbows on the counter, supporting his chin as he stared at me intently. 

“No one ever tell you staring is rude?” I asked with an attitude. 

“No one ever tell you to shut the fuck up?” he shot back simply. 

“You’re the one who literally got up and walked over here to give me shit.” My smirk turned sour when I sipped the water and a headache started immediately thumping against the insides of my temples. 

“’Cause it’s just so much fun to see you squirm, babe,” he said with an evil glint in his eye. 

“Well, good for you, I’ll leave now, if that’s okay.” 

I moved toward the door to George’s (my) room, glass still in my hand and gaze still transfixed on my toes. 

“Running from me already?” he asked sarcastically, the words practically melting in my ears. “That’s not the reaction I usually get.” 

I rolled my eyes for I felt a false security now that he couldn’t see my face. 

“Cat get your tongue?” he continued taunting. 

I still didn’t deem him worthy of a reply and kept walking until I reached the door, my hand already on the knob. 

“Should’ve known you’d be the kind of girl to put out and pretend nothing’s happened like a fuckin’ child.” As he got angrier, his speech patterns transformed from relatively civilized to what I had taken to calling ‘J-Dog’ (the rapper alter ego), which simply required a smaller amount of enunciation and a larger part of swearwords. I felt flattered already. 

“Should’ve known you’d be kind the kind of man to pretend that we did anything more than make out in order to rile me up,” I pressed, even though I was trying to keep my voice even. 

“Oh, so you remember something?” he mocked. 

His voice was approaching me slowly, and I couldn’t help but turn around to look at Jorel’s pointedly innocent face as he stood in the middle of the room, stepping toward me cautiously, as if he were afraid that I could lash out and punch him. To be fair, though, my brother had probably done that at some point of their friendship if I remembered George’s temper correctly – which I certainly did. 

“Funny considering how fucked off your face you were,” he said with a nasty undertone. His shoulders were squared and he was hunched over in a somewhat aggressive pose, but at the same time his tone of voice spoke soft tales of seduction. 

I rolled my eyes, unable to quickly summon up a witty retort. 

“No, really, I thought I’d have to call an ambulance ‘cause of how desperate and horny you were – thought someone had roofied you or something.”  
He laughed; nasty and cold. I shrank back against the wall, regret at what I had let happen surging through my body. 

“But no, you were just _that_ into me,” he said. His voice was now barely above a whisper, but the words still hit me like he had screamed them through a megaphone and right into my ears. 

“’Jay, please’,” he moaned breathily, faking a high-pitched tone of voice that was probably supposed to resemble mine. “’More!’” 

That was it. 

I had had enough. 

“Fuck you, Jorel!” I said harshly, cutting off his almost violent gloating. “Fuck you and your big-ass ego; fuck you for thinking you’re fooling anyone at all; fuck you for thinking you’ve got any effect on me.” I was talking myself into a frenzy here – a small voice in the back of my head reminded me to stay calm and not say anything I would regret later on, but as usual when I was angry, all rationality was wiped aside by a glowing hot iron-like mass. “’Cause you don’t. I only kissed you ‘cause I _pitied_ you, ‘cause George told me about everything: The boot camp, your ex-girlfriend, and how Aron betrayed you-”

“I swear to God, bitch, talk to me like that one more time and I’ll forget for a second that I don’t hit women!” 

“Oh, please,” I huffed, setting the glass of water down on the coffee table – for some reason, I’d moved across the room while talking – and pressed my hands to my hips, giving Jorel a thin-lipped cynical smile. “You couldn’t hit me even if you tried.”   
He seemed to take that as a challenge as he approached rapidly, halting merely an inch or so in front of me until our noses were almost touching. 

“Don’t test me,” he growled, his breath ghosting over my lips. He was leaning down so he could look me in the eye as he stared mercilessly, our noses almost touching; that’s how close we were. 

“That a threat?” I asked. 

Oh, Jesus, Jade. 

This was a trait that I had picked up from George many, many years ago. Whenever I had seen him get into a fight with the other kids at the playground in the ugly suburban neighborhood we had used to live in, I had also noticed that he had a specific tactic of fighting: He always tried to rile his adversary up until they would throw the first punch so he could claim that he had merely acted out of self-defense. It was an impeccable plan at all times as no one had ever been able to prove the contrary – because it was the truth. The other kid had started hitting him and he had simply retaliated. 

Of course, Jorel and I were not fighting over who had the right to be on the monkey bars now and we most certainly were not going to start punching each other (or at least I hoped we weren’t), but the principle was the same: Whenever I got in an uncomfortable situation, I would try to worm my way out of it by playing the victim. It definitely was not the most glorious of solutions, neither was it particularly mature, but it worked. 

However, I quickly got the impression that riling Jorel up might not have been the best idea I had had in about eighteen years of inhabiting this beautiful planet and about ten years of being able to think coherently. 

“You think you know it all,” growled Jorel. He was close enough for me to see the darker brown spot in the iris of his left eye. It was annoyingly beautiful. 

“And you think you have it all,” I retorted with an attitude. I was definitely more than uncomfortable being this close to him sober; but on the other hand, it felt good to be near someone like that again. Well, not the fighting part, but the intimacy part. Even though all the intimacy between the two of us was passion born out of nothing but pure hate. 

“I _do_ have it all,” he whispered, coming impossibly closer. His lips hovered over mine for a second, contemplative and –

The doorbell rang. 

With a smirk, Jorel pulled away and walked toward the front door, leaving me to collect myself. I had not realized how flustered I had gotten during this…episode, so it was only now that I realized the sweat pooling in the back of my neck. It was uncomfortable and sticky enough for me to walk into the bathroom and take a quick sink-shower before going to change my shirt in my bedroom. 

Of course, I had made the equation without the two hormonal post-teens standing in the doorway of the apartment just as I tugged off my shirt on my way to the bedroom – you see, the buzzer in this building was broken. It would be fixed soon, but until then, everybody had to walk downstairs and let their guests in the front door. Therefore, I had assumed that Jorel would take a little longer than that. 

“Ay, girl, no stopping on my account,” said Dylan, causing me to laugh awkwardly and slam the door shut behind me. Jorel’s eyes burning into mine were still the only thing imprinted in my head, and I could simply not seem to be able to rid myself of their taunting image. 

“In your dreams!” I yelled through the door. 

“Every night, babe!” he replied, causing me to let out a light-hearted snicker. 

“You wish!” 

I quickly discarded the shirt and slipped into a new one, spraying myself with deodorant before leaving the room. Of course, I chose the exactly most inopportune moment in the world to let myself into the living room: 

Jorel was talking quietly and intently, staring at a mortified-looking Dylan, who immediately shushed the other. 

“Let’s hit the road, girl.” He looked at me with a tight smile. “I’m sure you’d like to have actual dinner and not some takeout shit.” 

Honestly – I constantly thank God for Dylan Alvarez. 

We walked towards the door, and when we reached it, I turned around one last time to see Jorel giving Dylan a suspiciously warning look. I shook it off and reached for my bag.


	13. The Walls Are Closing In On Me

In the car, Dylan was uncharacteristically silent. It was quite unsettling actually, seeing as he usually was so bubbly and talkative. I finally caved in after about five minutes, unable to take the awkward silence any longer. 

“Okay, what did that asshole tell you?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. 

“Nothing,” replied Dylan. ‘LIAR’ was basically tattooed all over his forehead as he spoke, prompting me to roll my eyes. 

“If you think I believe that, you really are as stupid as you sometimes act,” I snapped, but there was no real venom behind it. Dylan was too nice to hate. 

He mumbled something unintelligible in response, so low that I could not even make out a single syllable, let alone a word. It was frustrating. 

“And if you think I heard that, you’re really overestimating me.” I raised my eyebrows, good-naturedly.   
Dylan’s hands tightened around the steering wheel as he turned to look at me with the most seriously terrified expression on his face. 

“Jay reminded me,” he said, “of what your lovely brother said he’d do if he caught any of us trying to get with you.” 

I couldn’t help the chuckle leaving my mouth at that. 

“And what was that?” 

“He said he’d cut off our dicks and shove them down our throats.” 

That was it – I cracked up completely. The statement, paired with Dylan’s absolutely terrified look, was the most ridiculous thing I had heard all week – probably all year. My hysterical giggles stood in stark contrast to his begrudging silence. After some time, however, even he couldn’t pretend anymore and started laughing his stupidly honking duck laughter. I liked it more than the smirk he put on to impress chicks; it was warmer, more welcoming and genuinely sincere, much like Dylan himself. 

“Were you planning to try and ‘get with me’?” I asked, trying my best to imitate his diction. This was just such a George thing to do; it was hilarious. What I found even more hilarious was that, out of all four of them, _Jorel_ had been the one to remind him of the ‘no touching George’s little sister in inappropriate places’-rule, when we had drunkenly made out after I had basically poured out my heart to him. (This was the bad thing about drinking for me. No matter how drunk I was, I would never forget what I had done. Just imagine having to remember every single stupid thing you do when you were wasted off your face. It’s not a lot of fun.) 

“Yeah, sure,” he said, rolling his eyes. “If I wanted to, you’d be naked and kneeling.” 

“Yikes, Alvarez,” I said, exaggeratedly shivering. “Keep your tralala to yourself.” 

He laughed as he pulled into the parking lot of the grocery store.

-

Eating dinner with Dylan was always somewhat of an experience. He would chew loudly and open-mouthed, uncaring of all etiquette and concepts as obscure as ‘manners’. Nonetheless, it was always insanely fun to be around him. And luckily, we were at the apartment anyway. I had mustered up what cooking skills I had learned in the short time of living with my grandmother and made a stir fry; because one cannot simply mess up a stir fry. 

Dylan, however, was the sort of person that was always smiling despite all the horrible things they witnessed every day, and the most important part was that he definitely wasn’t faking any of his jokes or laughs: He was genuinely happy with himself and everyone in his vicinity, having been able to leave his darker past behind and now looking at the future with the bright, hopeful eyes of a child. 

“And then I swear on my mama’s life, she held up the chocolate syrup and said ‘where do you wanna put it?’!” We were laughing uncontrollably, much to the dismay of one certain Jorel Decker, who was slouching on the sofa, munching on a cookie (a cookie that I had bought for him - just saying) and watching reruns of the Amazing Race. 

“And your brother was there the whole time and, shit, he fuckin’ saved me, Jade,” he continued his wild story. “He, like, started talking about ‘that bug I caught a year ago’ and she was like ‘what bug?’ and I was like ‘nah, it ain’t nothing’ and then she was like ‘then tell me’ and I, like, fucked around a little more and George was like ‘jus’ tell her’, y’know?” Following Dylan’s stories, however, was a completely different chapter. He had an uncanny tendency to talk in lightning speed, using the phrase ‘[blank] was like’ much more often than strictly necessary. 

I was pretty good at understanding what he was talking about, though – we were best friends meant to be. 

“And she was like ‘I’ll just go’ and that was it. Fuck, it was crazy.” He sounded exhausted after having told the insane story. “But, y’know, ladies just dig me.” 

I laughed louder, my voice slipping into dizzying heights of frequency. “Or everyone in LA has really bad taste.” 

My snickering caused him to whack my upper arm, but he soon joined in, positively pissing off an already quite disinclined Jorel. 

“Would you two just go and fucking flirt elsewhere?” he exclaimed, causing me to laugh louder. 

“Yeah, King Kong, let’s go flirt elsewhere.” Dylan almost had tears in his eyes, he was laughing so hard. 

“Shit Jay, if I didn’t know better I’d say you were jealous.” 

This statement, for some reason, startled me enough to smother the amassing laughter in my throat. With a start, I shook the thought off – simply because it was just too ridiculous. Why would Jorel be jealous of Dylan? It wasn’t like Dylan and I would ever possibly do anything non-G-rated. And, first and foremost (I needed to almost violently remind myself of that), it wasn’t like Jorel and I would ever possibly do anything non-G-rated. This one slip-up was definitely unintentional and had solely happened because of severe intoxication of both parties. 

No other reason. 

After some time, Jorel and Dylan announced that it was time for band practice and they left; Jorel without as much as a brisk nod and Dylan only after having hugged me about forty-five times while thanking me for the meal I had haphazardly thrown together. 

And currently, I was sat on the couch, phone in hand and a contemplative frown on my forehead. Press ‘2’ to dial safety, press ‘1’ to dial saying what I had been yearning to say for months. 

1\. Val.

Or 2. Grandma. 

The decision was hanging above me like the sword of Damocles, dangling dangerously on a horse’s hair – but it didn’t drop, kept hanging, the invisible threat. 

1.

Or 2.

Or I could simply call Amy, ask her to come over? 

3\. 

Three ways to go. 

My head was spinning. 

I pressed. 

A few seconds dragged by as I idly waited for the person on the other end of the line to pick up. 

“Hello?” greeted a fragile, old voice. 

“Hi, Grandma,” I replied, silently cursing myself for being such a coward. 

“Jade! I haven’t heard from you since your birthday,” she said, voice brightening and lightening until it felt like sunbeams warming my skin. “Are you doing okay?” 

Was I? 

I finally felt like I was able to forget my paralyzing grief, if that was what she meant. The memory of my father and Lory had faded into a distant image of love rather than a very much apparent one of loss, anger and loneliness. I no longer felt as though a part of me had been torn away rather violently, I simply liked to remember them fondly. Like an old photograph, my father smiled down at me lovingly while Lory curled her thin lips into a somewhat friendly-seeming grimace. 

But then again, everything had suddenly come crashing down the second that Jorel and I had kissed. Now all the wounds were reopened – not the grieving-a-premature-death wounds, but the having-been-left-by-my-boyfriend wounds – and I missed Val more than ever. 

“Yeah,” I replied. 

Our conversation went on idly for a few more minutes until my grandmother announced that she had a bridge club to go to and hung up, of course not without assuring me that she loved me more than anything in the world. 

I sat in the empty apartment for a few minutes until the silence suddenly turned smothering – I couldn’t stand being alone now that I was used to being graced with the company of either my brother or his friends at all times. 

The walls seemed to be closing in on me slowly, inching closer as I sat on the couch, one breath after another leaving my lungs. My father was dead – at least I could say it now, think it now, without feeling the sawblade of grief and sadness cut through me with ice-cold vigor – but there were tons of new problems hitting me across the head now. 

What was I going to do about Jorel? Ignore him? Tell him to leave me alone, although he had been doing just that over the past day? Tell him that I wanted more, that I wanted to be close to him? That I wanted him? 

No. 

No; I could not do any of that. I could not show any weakness in front of a man like that. I could not show that I was thoroughly infatuated with his smile, his dimples, his laugh, his eyes, his strong, strong arms – no, stop it, bad Jade. Bad Jade. 

I was suddenly hit with the compelling feeling that I simply _had_ to get out of here. The walls were closing in and the ceiling was drooping low above me like a blanket of heavy, thick concrete. Compelled by a quite impulsive decision, I grabbed my keys and left the apartment, luckily having enough presence of mind to shove my phone into my pocket. 

When I reached the front door of the complex, I suddenly realized that my dinner with Dylan had taken way longer than expected for the sun stood proudly above the concrete jungle in the distance, illuminating the streets and painting them in an orange-rosé light. It was close to setting, barely even managing to tower above the buildings. For a second, I considered retreating up the stairs when I distantly thought of the muttered warning not to leave the house alone from George, but my impulses got the better of me and I kept walking, eyes roaming over the shopfronts in front of me. 

It was nice for a while, just walking and not thinking about anything else, but at some point, I found myself in a place that did not seem like the pictures in shiny catalogues advertising beautiful vacations in Hollywood, CA; not at all. Sunset Strip at night sure was something – the neon signs advertising bars and clubs lit up the night, turning it into an image quite similar to what the somewhat familiar New York City looked like – right until you looked closer and saw the masses of homeless people setting up camp in front of the warm shop entrances. Shady-looking people exchanging items while looking around surreptitiously. Working girls, trying to approach wealthier-looking businessmen. Dingy strip joints wedged between posh restaurants and clubs which were, without exception, blaring loud trance music all over the night-fallen street. 

I didn’t remember where exactly I had come from, much less did I know where I had to go to in order to return to the apartment complex. My first thought was to ask someone for the address, but when I looked more closely at the crowds gathered around me, I felt intimidated enough to let go of that plan. 

My instinct told me to call my brother, but when I snapped open my phone, an incoming text announced that he and the guys were ‘going out for some drinks’ and that they would ‘be back round 12’. Not to worry, however, because ‘jay ll be home’. Oh, and, most importantly: ‘phone’s dead.’ 

_Shit_. 

My next call was directed toward Dylan, whose answering machine picked up immediately. I angrily put the phone down, contemplating my next move. 

Sure, I could call Jordon – but chances were that he would tell my brother about this and that I would be in great, great trouble when the next morning dawned. 

So I did the next best thing I could think of at the moment.

He picked up when he was down to the last ring, his answering machine already getting ready to click into place, and grunted out a gruff ‘hello’. 

“Hey, so,” I said, biting my lip. 

“You’re not at home,” he pointed out. “Not that I give a fuck, but I think George told you not to go out alone.” 

I anxiously rubbed the back of my neck and then moved to pinch the bridge of my nose between two fingers. Great. Now I was even picking up my brother’s annoying mannerisms. 

“I got lost,” I said simply. 

Jorel groaned. “Well, what the fuck do you want me to do about it?” 

A sheepish look snuck its way onto my face and I was once again glad that he would not be able to see my face. 

“Can you come pick me up? I’m somewhere on Sunset and-”

“You’re on _Sunset_?” he cut across me, sounding no notch short of furious. He immediately regained his composure, though. “Why the fuck would you go for a walk on Sunset Strip, _after the actual fucking sunset_?” 

He probably thought himself absolutely hilarious for coming up with a suitable pun in a situation like this – I remained unimpressed. Nonetheless, I was unwilling to comment on his questionable sense of humor as I, indeed, really, really needed his help. 

“Why the hell do you care so much, Decker?” I asked gruffly. I was receiving odd looks from passers-by, which was why every second, I felt more and more like my environment was hostile toward me. 

“Right, ‘cause I’m just a heartless bastard you call when you’re in trouble,” he snarled. He sounded genuinely vicious, making me instantly regret that I had even come up with the idea of calling him. 

“Nevermind, I’ll figure something out,” I said therefore. 

“No!” Jorel exclaimed suddenly, causing me to jerk the phone away from my ear momentarily. “I mean, your brother would probably dismember me if something bad happened to you.” 

I smirked cynically. “Whoa, a polysyllabic word.” 

He groaned. “Stay where you are. I’ll come get you.” 

“But you don’t _know_ where I am. Sunset is pretty long, dude.” 

“Yeah, but you start looking round like a tourist now, people will come at you for sure.” 

I huffed, angry that I had not thought of that. Speaking of tourists – this particular section of Sunset was absolutely devoid of all tourist actions. No annoying German was talking rapidly at his companion, wearing socks and sandals and a painfully expensive camera; no Japanese were taking pictures of everything. I had actually managed to land in the unsafest part of Hollywood by chance. There had to be a talent show for that sort of shit somewhere in the world. 

“Text me what you see. Half hour, tops, okay?” 

“With the way you drive? You’ll be in Minnesota in half an hour.” 

Jorel even chuckled at that; a soft, almost nice sound. He cut himself short when he noticed, and said in his usual gruff voice, “Very funny, Ragan. Try not to seem lost. Pretend you’re waiting for your boyfriend or something, I’m sure that’s not gonna be a problem for you.” 

He hung up right after that, apparently not wanting to hear my reply. I was about to angrily stuff my phone back into my pocket, but then remembered what he had said and kept it in my hand, opening a new text message. 

What could I see? 

There was a bar right next to me, exceptionally sleazy-looking. The people walking in and out were mostly men in their late thirties, hair gelled back and wearing white, disgusting-looking undershirts. Against Jorel’s order, I started walking down the boulevard a little, my eyes scanning for something significant to hold onto. I suddenly discovered a somewhat familiar building: It was an H&M shop. Of course, it was dark and its doors were sealed shut, but at least something. A homeless man was eyeing me suspiciously as I made my way over, typing out a message to Jorel. 

‘ _h &m next to a bar called entro ps. cant see a number but theres a dennys nearby_.’ 

I decided that this description would have to suffice as I was shaken by the uncomfortable feeling that someone was staring at me from behind – better to be in possession of all my senses if someone came at me, right?


	14. Savior Fantasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! 
> 
> Alrighty, I know I've been on a reposting spree today, but maybe this is the point where I stop for a second and explain a little bit of what's going on.
> 
> I don't know if any of y'all remember the original version of this chapter, but basically, Jade gets almost sexually assaulted, Jorel sweeps in and saves her and then the two share a kiss. And that...okay, this is a big no-no. I don't mean to sound pompous or like I'm lecturing anyone, just...sexual assault as a plot catalyst is appalling. Which is why I took out the kiss and tried to frame the attempted assault as a robbery, because: This is not okay. 
> 
> It's a trend that I've seen alarmingly often in YA and NA novels recently. Especially those wattpad fics-turned-novels are a little troubling to me. Sorry for interrupting this to do some rambling, I'm just a little appalled at myself right now. 
> 
> So, before we get back to the story: Sexual assault is not a springboard for romance. Sexual assault is horrible, and even attempted assault is deeply scarring and leaves people severely traumatised. If you or anyone you know have experience something like the thing that is described in this chapter, please open up and talk to people. We often forget that stories on the internet are not like real life; they do not feature real people or describe real behaviours. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading and thank you for your patience with my ramblings. I really hope that you enjoy this story despite my constant criticising it.
> 
> Love,  
> M

Waiting for Jorel turned out to be one of the most horrifying things I had ever had to do in my entire life. I reflected upon the time that I had had to climb a twenty-foot rope in gym class during my junior year, and was uncomfortably reminded of the stomach-twisting feeling I had developed when I had reached the top, vertigo swinging with me as I had tried to tell my teacher that now would have been the time to help me. 

Just when I thought that it had all gone by without any sort of run-in with a less friendly individual, I felt ghastly breath raising goosebumps on the back of my neck. Up until then, I had busied myself with idly scrolling through my phone (fuck having all my senses at my disposal; looking busy was the way to go here), pretending to be texting someone avidly, but now I quickly snapped the phone shut, turning around and being met with the face of a greasy-looking man. 

He looked to be around thirty, with disgusting, slicked-back hair and a winning smirk on his face. There was something very, very wrong about the situation here, and every fiber of my being was screaming for me to put the figurative pedal to the floor and run. 

I didn’t, however, and bravely looked him in the eye. 

“You look lost,” he said. His voice was deep and gravely, now also raising goosebumps along my arms. 

“I’m not,” I replied, hostility badly concealed. Shit, Jade, that is not the way to go. Do not aggravate the man who’s looking at you like he wants to eat you alive. God, _wrong fucking wording_. 

“Well, what’s a pretty girl like you doing here then?” he asked. The smirk on his lips was incessant and absolutely irritating; but not the same way that Jorel’s was. When Jorel smirked, it was accompanied by a general pissed-off-ness, while this guy simply looked _evil_. 

“Waiting for my friend,” I replied, trying to keep my voice even and steady. 

“But who would let a beautiful girl wait in the dark like that?” he asked slickly. 

Cars were rushing past us, but none of them seemed to be slowing down. _Fuck, Jay, please hurry up_.

The man was approaching slowly, his right hand going to rest on my shoulder while his breath hit my face like a gust of wet, disgusting wind. I refrained from grimacing and simply stood, looking him in the eye. _Do not falter_. 

“Please let go of me,” I said politely. 

The only reaction I got was roaring laughter – quite the opposite of what I had hoped to achieve, frankly. He did not at all look fazed by my request, simply inched closer until his breath was mingling with mine in the small space between our faces. His laugh sounded evil rather than amused. The sound of it sent bursts of shudders through my body, the will to retreat causing me to tremble slightly. 

I was utterly repelled by his complete existence, to say it with fewer words. 

“Why should I? I’m liking this a whole lot.” He came even closer, sending another shock of resentment through me. 

I had finally had enough and pushed him away quickly, my hands going up to hit at his chest. It was one of these moments that slowed down like in a movie – and suddenly, every detail was apparent to me. There was sweat on his upper lip and on his forehead; and more importantly, there were muscles that I had failed to notice before in his arms and upper body. 

It was for that reason that he had no trouble whatsoever grabbing my hands before they could even touch him, using the leverage to pull me even closer to his body. 

“What do you think you’re doing, baby?” he asked sweetly. 

Everything about this screamed that it was wrong, bad, to be in this guy’s arms. He was too warm, too close, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

“Let go of me,” I pressed, talking while trying not to inhale any of the air he’d exhaled – I felt it was toxic; like he was breathing poison.

I didn’t know why the thought to call for help hadn’t occurred to me any earlier, but I finally opened my mouth to let out a bone-shattering, high-pitched scream. 

Which he immediately smothered with his hand. 

And it would not have been particularly effective either as I discovered the part of the boulevard which we were standing on was completely deserted anyway. Where had everyone gone? 

I gulped heavily, squirming in his arms, desperately trying to worm my way out of his death grip. 

“Now, why don’t we move this elsewhere?” he asked. Before I could realize what was going on, he was pulling me off into the direction of a nearby alley, easily holding me close with the help of only one hand. “Here’s what we’re gonna do, girlie. You’re gonna give me your wallet and phone, and quick, too.”

Before he could speak more, however, the pressure of his hands suddenly disappeared. My eyesight was blurry with tears I had not even realized were welling up, and therefore, it took me a few seconds to blink away the dizziness and see what invisible force had flung the man away from me. My hand flew up to my face, desperately trying to wipe the trace of his disgusting hand off my face. 

And then I saw him. 

Jorel was crowding the guy against a wall, his forearm pressed against his throat as he leaned closer to talk. 

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doin’ there, buddy?” he snarled. It was low and animalistic and so un-Jorel-like. His carefully controlled mask of emotionlessness was slipping. 

I had never, without exception, seen him this absolutely furious. Sure, he had been pissed at George before, he had been angry with me (most of the time, actually) but he had never been flat-out vicious in front of me. Seeing him seething was almost more terrifying than the prospect of what could have happened if he had not stepped in. 

“Chill out, dude, I was just going to take her wallet,” said the sleazebag. 

That seemed to set Jorel off as he immediately drew his free hand back, placing a well-aimed punch in the other’s stomach, sending him into a visibly painful coughing fit. His hands desperately went to prod at Jorel, but he couldn’t do anything as he was completely trapped by the arm cutting off his air supply. 

“You’re fucking scum, you disgusting piece of shit,” Jorel barked. He lunged at the guy again, hitting him in the stomach repeatedly until the other looked positively blue in the face. 

“Jay,” I finally got myself to say, taking a small step closer to the two of them. 

“Stay the fuck back, Jade,” he said, not even turning around too look at me. 

The man who was currently being assailed with punches frowned for a second, apparently astounded that we knew each other’s names, until his eyes widened in false realization. “Oh, relationship trouble?” he asked. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of her when you dump her.” 

Another fit of scalding rage pressed through Jorel’s body, and his fist went up to hit the man in the nose. 

“Jay,” I repeated, stepping closer timidly. 

“No, Jade,” he yelled. He let out an animalistic growl, hitting the helpless man yet again. 

“You’ll kill him if you keep this up,” I pressed out. My voice was shaky. As were my knees, but nonetheless, I stepped closer, catching Jorel’s hand with both of mine, and lacing my fingers with his on a stupid impulse. Half-expecting him to pull away, I averted my eyes shyly, looking at the ground. 

But he didn’t let go, keeping our hands interlocked as he took a step back, regarding his work with a furrowed brow. 

“If I see you near her again, I swear to God, I won’t let you off that easy,” he spat at the pathetically crumpled heap of a man – all the mocking self-confidence had vanished as he sunk to the floor, clutching his middle and swearing under his breath with what little energy he had left. 

Jorel then turned around rapidly and started power-walking into the direction of where I presumed his car was parked. I felt like this was not the moment to speak, so I let him brood in silence as he kept walking down the boulevard, cars rushing past and ruffling his hair in the wind. He was going too fast for my tired legs, pulling me along until it was almost painful. 

We rounded a corner and hurried along a short alley until I caught sight of his car, haphazardly parked at the side of the road, seemingly unaware of things like parking tickets and the possibility of getting that shit towed. He must have been in an insane rush to get to me, as if he had sensed something was wrong. 

Jorel opened the passenger door for me, a gesture that left me so astounded that I couldn’t do anything but stare at him for a few moments, right until he let go of my hand and gave my shoulder a gentle push. I bent down to get in the car with a bit of difficulty – my joints were aching – as I tried to read any sort of sense into his expression. 

There was nothing to see there, really, for he had chosen to cover himself with a carefully executed frown. Nothing more, nothing less. 

He quickly got into the driver’s seat but made no move to start the car. 

“That was beyond fucking stupid,” he said finally. 

I let out a short, hysterical chuckle, still too shaken to properly control my actions. “I know,” I said. “Thank you.” 

It took him a while to reply, as he was busy clutching the steering wheel until his knuckles went white. “God knows what he would’ve done if I hadn’t been there,” he said. His voice no longer sounded like he was ready to rip someone’s head off – he was now exasperated, exhausted, tired; or all of the above. 

“I know,” I said. 

“God, if I’d only hurried up more…” 

I whipped my head around as fast as I could with my muscles feeling like they were about to give out beneath the weight of my body, looking at him like he had gone crazy. 

“Jay, you probably went a hundred miles an hour anyway. This,” I gestured, indicating the events of that evening, “was not your fault. It was mine, for having a freak-out and needing to leave the house.” 

He finally met my gaze with an expression that conveyed something like…regret? Worry? 

Then, he did something that was so un-Jorel-like that I forgot how to breathe for a second: He reached across the console and took my hand, softly cradling it in his. His thumb stroked the back of my hand almost reverently while he looked into my eyes. After a moment, he reluctantly let go and started up the engine. There was an undefinable emotion in his eyes as he directed them back to the street. 

“You should probably start driving now, or else George is gonna be there when we get home,” I suggested with a tiny, tiny smile. 

As he started driving, I leaned my head against the window, staring at the deserted streets of Hollywood as we sped toward the apartment complex. There was still something quite off-putting about the way his temper had switched that quickly. 

Girls in movies and books always talk about how ‘hot’ it is when guys act protective, sometimes even possessive of them – but this definitely did not feel like that. It rather felt like I had witnessed a part of Jorel that I had never wanted to see. When I closed my eyes, I still saw the look of red-hot rage plastered all over his face, eyes practically glowing as he punched at the helpless guy, again and again. Granted, the man had not been exactly innocent, but beating him to a pulp like that? It was scary. 

Before I knew it, Jorel had pulled into the parking lot of the complex and was now holding the door open for me. When he saw my expression, he quickly slid his arm around me, helping me up and toward the building. His hands were so secure, so safe around me that I forgot all my prior doubts and simply let myself be half-carried up the stairs. 

Now, most people would probably expect us to furiously fuck out our passion for each other and start a tempestuous relationship – but that was not how it worked. 

Following some sort of unspoken agreement, Jorel and I postponed the passionate sex until further notice and lay down on the couch, the TV quietly advertising some kind of hair product in the background as we sat next to each other, our thighs touching, but nothing more, really. 

All thoughts about his unsettling sudden aggression forgotten, we watched South Park reruns. Against everything I had expected, Jorel didn’t even try to come onto me, simply held me. There was no conversation between the two of us, no definition of what had happened and why he had taken my hand, we simply sat, like we were not Jade and Jorel but simply two people. 

As much as I had expected it to happen, Jorel’s hands neither wandered nor squeezed, they stayed in his lap, occasionally going up to his mouth when he chewed on his nails periodically. 

We stayed on the couch for what felt like days but mere seconds at the same time. Right up until I heard a key jiggle in the lock and jerked upward, giving Jorel a look that spoke of fear and discontent. 

There was another silent conversation between us when he raised himself off the sofa and started walking toward the bathroom. It wasn’t like we’d been doing anything unseemly, we were just watching TV side-by-side, but I still didn’t want to have a serious conversation with my father. 

When Jorel reached the door, George had finally managed to wrap his drunken head around the function of keys and locks and was stumbling over the sill. 

“Haa,” he slurred, probably his warped version of a greeting. 

I smiled softly, pointing him to the door of his (my) bedroom. 

“Take the bed, George, I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

In a sober state, he probably would have protested, but as intoxicated as he was, he had no problem walking into the bedroom and falling into the bed I had gotten used to sleeping in. 

Now that I had no actual chance to get my pajamas, I simply stripped down to my shirt and panties after quickly brushing my teeth. 

Jorel probably thought that I had not seen the longing looks he had thrown at my backside, but I decided to let it slide as he was behaving quite uncharacteristically anyway. (I was still astounded that he had yet to try to sleep with me, or even to kiss me. Maybe he was being nice because I was a special kind of conquest for him? Fuck, I was way too tired to think about these sorts of things.) 

With a final sigh, I fell asleep on the couch, haunted by images of Jorel laughing at me; visions of him telling me that he had only wanted to see me naked. That he had used my weak moment to his advantage to break me. Stupidly enough, the thought of embarrassment and shame frightened me less than the prospect of Jorel not wanting me.


	15. Ignorance Is Your New Best Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is taken from "Ignorance" by Paramore

Saturday morning brought a massive headache for my brother, an odd scowl for Jorel, and multiple cups of coffee after a night of fitful sleep for me. I had woken up after the two of them (I didn’t even know how that was possible as I had slept in the living room) and now we were all gathered around the dining table, Matt and Dylan slouching on the sofa while Jordon was animatedly talking to Aron on the phone. I knew it was Aron because I could hear his annoying voice even across the room. 

“Aron scored us a gig at a club next week,” said Dylan as an explanation. 

I simply nodded, still a little put-off by how cold Jorel was acting toward me. Maybe he had been acting nice the night before because I had been through a traumatic situation? Maybe the hand-holding had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, and now he regretted it? 

But shit, now that we had gotten close not once but twice, I was out of explanations. Perhaps he was just fucking with me, though. This seemed like something Jorel would do; make a woman want him just for the sake of feeling wanted. It was the sort of self-centered mind-masturbation only he was capable of. 

“That’s awesome,” I said into my third mug of coffee. 

“Everything okay, Jade?” asked George suddenly, trying to sound inconspicuous while we all knew he was on to something. 

“Sure,” I replied simply, giving him a slightly forced smile. 

I couldn’t help but feel slightly bitter that everyone was here, to be honest. Of course, it was amazing to see all the guys and talk to them again, but did that have to happen on the one day that I was hoping to get Jorel alone to talk about what had happened? 

I found myself wanting to talk to someone; anyone. But who to call? Telling Amy would require confessing to her that I had kissed her crush, which probably would not sit too well with her. Telling my brother would probably cause some sort of violent crime, which probably would not sit too well with the LAPD. Who did that leave? 

I sighed. 

Dylan would be my saving grace; I was sure of it. The only question was; how could I get him away from the rest of the group?

“Hey, so Georgie, Jay and me got shit to do, we’ll probably be gone all day,” announced Jordon suddenly. 

I looked at him, silently thanking whatever God was on duty right now. 

“Cool,” I said, trying to sound indifferent while I was inwardly doing a victory dance. 

“Wanna go out for lunch?” asked Dylan, giving me a knowing smile. 

I nodded. 

Sure enough, only an hour later, Dylan and I were sat in a booth at the Denny’s on Sunset Strip. I couldn’t help but gag slightly at the memory of having passed the very same building just the day before but gulped it down in order to tell the story to Dylan. 

“So, what’s wrong, girl?” he asked when the waitress had left after promising that our drinks ‘wouldn’t be long’. 

“How could you tell?” I smiled. 

“Psh,” said Dylan. “You looked like you were ready to kill Jay in the morning.” He laughed a bit, warm and welcoming. “More than usual.” 

I nodded slightly, peering around the corner to see if the waitress was approaching with my coffee. I needed caffeine – which was probably a sign of a growing addiction, come to think about it. Especially considering I had chugged about five cups that morning alone. 

With little hesitation, I retold the events of the prior evening to Dylan. My voice shook slightly when I got to the point where Jay had turned up, almost beating the sleazy asshole to death in the process. When I had finished with a soft ‘and then we held hands’, Dylan stared at me. Open-mouthed and everything. The only thing missing was a dribble of spit. 

Our drinks had already been served, and I was now gratefully sipping my black coffee. 

“So what you’re tellin’ me is that you went for a walk on Sunset at night, were almost robbed by some sleazy guy who could’ve done God knows what to you, and then Jay saved your sorry ass only to come on to you himself?” 

I nodded sheepishly. “He didn’t come on to me per se,” I said quietly. “He was being really sweet and shit.” 

When I finally forced myself to talk to Dylan’s ears rather than the tabletop, I discovered that he was actually smiling. 

“Babe,” he said, and it sounded like I wasn’t going to like what was about to come. “Imma be straight here.” 

I raised my eyebrows. “Are you trying to come out of the closet, Dyl?” I asked, trying to skillfully overplay my nervousness – it wasn’t working. 

“Very funny.” He gave me a sour look, but he was smiling nonetheless. “I haven’t seen Jay be nice with a girl ever since…something happened some time ago-”

“I know about Jenna,” I cut across him. “It’s okay.” 

“Alright. So, I haven’t seen him be nice with a girl ever since that shit went down. Now he’s acting all lovey-dovey and shit with you and…I don’t know.” He shrugged as if to emphasize his point of, well, not knowing. “I’ve known the guy all my life and I love him like a brother, but he’s a fuckin’ dog when it comes to women – no pun intended – and I’m a little worried.” 

I smiled in spite of myself, though furrowing my brow nevertheless. “I get it, but still. Why would he act that nice when he’s just trying to get in my pants?” 

That, for some reason, made him laugh. “I’m worried ‘bout you much, babe. Sure I’m worried, but I’m more scared he’ll do something to fuck it up and kill himself over it.” There was a sad smile on his face as he covered my tiny hand with his huge paw. “If something like with Jenna happens again, he won’t make it. Please keep that in mind, yah?” 

I nodded wordlessly. 

“Now, let’s talk ‘bout something a little happier, alright?”

-

When we returned to the apartment, it was deserted. Dylan announced that he had a shift at the local IHOP (carrying their supplies and doing the dishes mostly – a crap job that didn’t even pay half the bills, but as he was still living with his Mom and Dad, it was a nice way to earn pocket money) and left, planting a kiss goodbye on my cheek and sweeping out. 

I was still half-pondering what he had told me earlier; that he was more worried about Jorel than me in the whole situation. I wondered whether he had been exaggerating when he had said that there was a good possibility Jorel would not survive if he did anything to hurt me (providing that he actually had some feelings for me; which, at this point, I was not even close to being sure about). I truly hoped Dylan had been kidding, because if not, Jorel would quickly become the most tragic figure I had ever encountered in eighteen years of being alive. 

To take my mind off these circling thoughts, I shortly tried to focus on another topic that had been plaguing me since our lunch: Dylan’s plans to move out. He had flat-out told me that it was getting too much constantly listening to his father throw forceful punches at his mother while trying to smoke pot out the window, getting himself baked enough to forget what was happening under the very same roof. He had also opened up about his anger at his father and himself; that he felt so utterly helpless in the face of his mother’s constant reassurance that ‘everything was fine’. He’d called the police on his father multiple times, but his mother had lied through her teeth when they’d come, telling them about her own clumsiness and her falling down the stairs repeatedly. 

Coming to Hollywood had surely turned my life upside down in every sense of the word. All safety, all security had vanished without a trace. Seeing all these lives that had been destroyed by events that the person living it had had no influence upon whatsoever, seeing smiles being wiped off of saddened faces, seeing people being crushed by this world where dreams became nightmares; it was killing me slowly. Jorel, Dylan, my own fucking brother – they were all cracking under what had been placed upon them; all the weight of all the world right between their shoulders; the heaviness of their failed dreams pulling them under. 

I was so overwhelmed with misery that was not even my own that I had to forcefully sit myself down on the couch, staring straight ahead as I tried to regain my composure. 

Soon later, a key was jiggling in the lock and my brother walked into the living room, whistling a soft tune as he dropped his keychain on the counter with a soft smile perched on the edges of his lips. 

“Hey, George?” I said questioningly. 

“Yeah?” he replied, giving me another smile. 

“Are you okay?” 

He was obviously startled by my outburst as he let out a dry laugh. “Yeah?” he replied, but his tone was questioning rather than absolute. 

“’Cause I was just talking to Dylan and he’s not okay, and I’m sorry if I’m not worrying about you as much as I should.” I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly. 

“Well, I am,” said George. He was walking towards me and finally plopped down on the couch, draping his large arm over my shoulders. I usually wasn’t a big fan of physical contact – I was always so hyper-aware of every place where another person was touching me; constantly worrying whether I was doing something wrong – but with George, closeness came naturally. He was my brother, and we shared a bond not even nine years of radio silence had been able to erase. 

“Okay, that is,” he continued. “Are you?” 

I shrugged. “I guess. I’m just a little shaken ‘cause…you know, this is a lot different from the suburbs of New Jersey.” I smiled at the thought of my former home. “I still miss home, kind of. Like, in LA you apparently don’t have these apple sticks that you get everywhere in Jersey? What is it with you people and your hatred for all things healthy?” I chuckled slightly. 

George bumped my shoulder with his in a friendly gesture. “We just like to live on the edge, I guess.” 

We remained silent for a second, until another thought crossed my mind. “I like this version of you better, y’know?” 

“Better than what?” 

“Better than the show you put on in front of your idiot friends ‘cause you think you have to seem tough.” I laughed. “When everyone actually knows you’re a fricking teddy bear.” 

He bumped my shoulder again, a little harder this time around. 

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, Jade,” he warned jokingly. 

“Did I ever tell you about Val, my boyfriend back in New Jersey?” I asked suddenly. 

“No?”

“Well, he told me that I only ever think about myself – that I’m basically just a dumb teenage girl that doesn’t realize that other people have needs too.” 

“Why did he say that?” 

“Because I was leaving for Los Angeles.” 

“That is effectively the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Why would you be the selfish one if you were forced to leave?” 

“Well, that was his logic,” I said, shrugging my shoulders again. “Doesn’t matter. He just told me that I’m a self-centered bitch; and only now have I realized that he was right. I really am. I treated you like shit ‘cause I didn’t want to be here, ‘cause I was pissed that my band was over. ‘Cause everything kind of went down the drain the second our Dad died.” 

George’s arm tightened around my shoulder. “We don’t have to talk about that.” 

“No, I want to. Fuck, I think I _need_ to. I know I’m not the best person; I know I’m moody as shit and I especially know that I’d have virtually no friends if it weren’t for you. But at the moment, I feel like everything is coming crashing down at once and – shit George, what do I do? I’ll graduate in four months; I need to start applying to colleges now ‘cause I don’t have my band anymore. I need to think up a new plan and fast too, and I don’t know where I’m going.” Now more than ever were my hands itching for a piano, for a guitar, for a musical instrument of any sort. For anything to relieve my stress and pent up emotions on. 

“You know what? I can take you to band practice if you want. See if you can do a few things with us?” 

I smile at him. “That’s more than I could ask, George. I’d love to come, but I’d rather have my own project than simply tag along with others.” 

“I’ll see if I can round up some friends.” He patted my shoulder comfortingly. It was a little awkward, and I could tell that he was still a little thrown off-guard by the fact that I was a woman in possession of a pair of well-developed boobs instead of the little eight-year old girl with pigtails that he remembered. “You don’t need to worry so much. You can take a year off and then start applying to colleges, no one’s gonna blame you for taking a gap year. Or you can blow college off completely and do something else. It doesn’t matter, Jade, as long as you don’t forget how much me and Grandma care about you; how much we want you to be around.” 

That made me smile slightly as I looked up at my brother, huge and comfortable on the old, worn-out leather couch; patched up and darned carelessly with colorful scraps of fabric. I felt as though I belonged here, however – I felt that there was no other place that I’d rather be in that moment. 

“Thanks, George,” I said finally, leaning further into his broad shoulders. 

We sat like that for a long time, talking about things that had happened here and there. The fun part about having been separated for nine years was that we would probably not be running out of things to talk about soon. 

Another Saturday was wasted with no trace of me doing homework (it was probably time for me to worry about graduation by now, but alright). Later during the day, I finally brought myself to call Amy despite the harrowing doubts inside my mind as I dialed. 

It was always a struggle talking to her because I knew that something would feel weird. Either I would tell her that Jorel and I had drunkenly kissed or would keep it to myself, which would very likely result in awkward tension from my side. 

We talked for about ten minutes; rather to make ourselves feel better about being a shitty friend to the other than to make genuine conversation, and after watching a movie together with George and Dylan, who had turned up somewhere around eight, I went to bed feeling impressively sorry for myself. 

The rest of the week was spent in a rather similar manner. Jorel, as I found out on Monday, was staying with his mother for the week to try and patch up their relationship some more (although the question whether it was working could probably be answered with a capitalized NO – capitalized because, as George had told me, all their previous attempts had ended in pathetic fights and/or Jorel getting piss-drunk) and therefore had preventively obviated every future awkward encounter in said week.


	16. Hot and Cold

By the time Friday rolled around, I had already damn near driven myself mad over my constant pondering on whether Jorel was playing a cruel joke on me or not, whether I even liked Jorel or not, whether I was going crazy or not. I came home from school moaning about homework and immediately retreating into my room with my head down low, prompting a few odd looks from both Jordon and George and a quite saddened gaze from Dylan, who was the only one who actually knew what was going on. 

After the third essay for English class I had written, my hand positively felt like it was going to fall off. George tentatively stuck his head in to ask me whether I felt like going out for dinner or wanted to stay in; causing me to mutter out an exhausted ‘no’ and bury myself further in a pile of problems for AP Calc. 

Without protest, my brother and his friends left the apartment, the lot of them muttering something unintelligible about band practice and getting their shit together for a gig that was going to go down sometime next week. I nodded at them without giving their words much thought.   
Hours later, when the clock had only just struck ten, I heard a key jiggle in the apartment door. I heard it because the walls in this place were so _fucking thin_ , it was killing me. 

I spent another ten boring minutes trying to find out what was going on with that goddamn calculation before the bedroom door slammed open, revealing a slightly tipsy Jorel, who was sporting a sad smile. 

“What do you want?” I grunted. 

It was a moment of pure cliché when he turned to look at me with an empty expression, eyes hollow and inexplicably exasperated as he said, “You.”   
When my brother loved, I had come to realize, it was the life-or-death kind of love that no woman in the world could resist at first. Only as time would go on, his beloved would realize that George was deadly codependent, would fight for her to the death. He would never be able to be without her, which in turn would make it impossible for her to be with him. George was a truly tortured soul when it came to love: He loved profoundly and truly. He loved like a tidal wave; like there was no tomorrow to think about and no yesterday to remember. He loved like every second had to mean something.   
Jorel, on the other hand, loved in a quite different manner. He loved carefully, calculatedly. There was no emotion behind his eyes on the best of days, pure hatred behind them on the worst. He loved so timidly because he had been hurt before; so painfully that he was now incapable of letting himself go. Only when he was drunk or high on some kind of drug he would be able to let himself go, I knew that much – that was the only reason why I immediately jumped up to take his hands, helping him flop down awkwardly on the bed. That and nothing else. 

I was still in two minds about my ambivalent feelings toward him, but snubbing Jorel when he was caught up in a state like this would quite possibly kill him. 

“What’s going on, Jay?” I asked finally, plopping down next to him. His hands were roaming the duvet as if looking for something, and only now did I realize that he was looking for my hand. 

I laced my fingers with his and eventually lay down next to him, deeming all efforts to push him away fruitless. 

“Everythin’s spinnin’, Jade,” he slurred. 

He was drunker than I had originally assumed. 

“I take it the week with your Mom went well, then,” I couldn’t help saying. I immediately felt bad, as soon as the word had left my mouth – _great going, Jade, kick the guy when he’s down_.

“Mom’s okay,” he said ambiguously, and I didn’t feel like prying into his business.

We lay there for hours, drinking in each other’s presence as the night grew from dark to darker and the daylight slipped further away with every second. 

I didn’t ask where my brother was, didn’t ask when he was going to return. Didn’t ask when we would have to break away from each other. 

One side of my brain – the rational one, I presumed – was screaming at me to break away immediately, because I truly hated Jorel. The other one, however, the traitor side, retaliated with the argument that ever since I had found out about the story of Jenna, I had stopped hating him altogether. Different, mixed feelings had taken the blind hatred’s place, turning it into a weird, coalesced mass of stupidity. ‘Stupidity’ was the right word for what I felt toward him. 

We fell asleep tangled together, Jorel muttering nonsensical things about his week while I tried not to listen, not to let myself believe that he truly needed me. 

The next morning was awkward and disgustingly warm at first. I blinked, lids heavy with the confusion that comes naturally for about three seconds after waking up, and tried to scan my surroundings to the best of my abilities. There was something firm and uncomfortable draped around my middle and warm morning breath was fanning all over my forehead and cheeks. 

A short spike of panic surged through me blood before I realized that it was Jorel, his body pressed up against mine as he was sweating out the last bit of alcohol he had consumed the evening prior. 

It took me about ten more seconds to remember what he was doing in my bed and ten more to freak out because _George could’ve come in, oh my fucking God_. When I looked down, hands ready to shake him awake, however, I suddenly felt sorry for him. Coming home drunk, telling me that he wanted me – what was that even supposed to _mean_ , God – and then falling asleep holding on to me like a child; all these were not exactly things that a particularly well-adjusted individual did. 

It was only about five minutes later that he started stirring, a little bit of drool dribbling from his chin. His eyes opened slowly and when he saw me, they immediately fell shut again. 

“Sorry,” he grunted, taking his arm off me and scooting to sit up. It was apparent that he was trying to worm his way out of the situation without talking about what had happened, but I wasn’t going to let him off that easy. 

“What’s going on, Jay?” I asked sharply, putting my hand on his shoulder to restrain him. 

“Nothing,” he replied with a grunt. He went to get off the bed again, but I increased the pressure, making it obvious that I was not going to be pleased with him if he left now (‘not pleased’ was an understatement of sorts – whoever has read the story to this point should be familiar with my temper). 

“I’ll only ask once more,” I said with an attitude, “What is going on, Jorel?” 

He groaned, rubbing his hand over his forehead exasperatedly. “Fucking nothing, okay? I was sad yesterday, didn’t feel like going home with some chick so I came here. I was fuckin’ hammered. Won’t happen again, I swear-”

“No,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly. “I mean, it can happen again. I just need to know what the hell is even going on here.” 

“What?” 

“I don’t know. What do you want from me, Jorel? And don’t try to bullshit your way out of this,” I warned, “Just, like, ten hours ago, you said you wanted me.” 

He rubbed the back of his neck, a gesture he had probably picked up from my brother, who had an uncanny tendency to try to express his inner turmoil by scratching at his skin. 

“I can’t do this much longer,” I said finally, and I knew it was the truth. “This hot-and-cold shit, it’s fucking stressing me out. You don’t tell me what you want, you just turn into this loving, caring, beautiful human being once a week and the rest of the time, you act like a fucking douchebag. So I’ll ask again: What do you want from me, Jay?” He looked at me for a long time, from across the room, and then suddenly, he was right in front of me. 

His hands were in my hair, on my cheeks, everywhere. He was pulling me closer, pulling my body into his until there was virtually no air left between us, our lips hovering millimeters apart from each other. 

“I want you,” he said huskily, and closed the gap. 

This time, the kiss was desperate, bruising and hard as he tried to pull me closer and closer. There was no room left between us, yet he was pushing and pulling, hungrily crushing my body into his. I had no force left in me to deny that it felt good to be close to him and let him do what he and I both wanted. Let him bury his hands in my hair and tug, hard. 

“Shit,” he gasped, sliding one of his hands down to cup the back of my neck. 

“Jay,” I muttered, moving away just a bit. “Jay.” 

He finally reopened his eyes, staring at me in a lust-clouded daze. 

“This, shit, this is not okay,” I gasped, desperately trying to suck air into my lungs. It felt like all the oxygen had drained from the room and the only way not to suffocate was to kiss Jorel, to breathe him in – but I was not going to. We were going to talk about this like adults; I was not going to let myself be used like that. 

“You can’t do this,” I said. “This is exactly what I mean by ‘hot-and-cold’!” I moved away some more, even though Jorel’s hands were still preventing me from untangling myself completely.

“Look,” he said, sounding annoyed. “I know you’re, like, fifteen, and you still write ‘do you like me? check yes/no’ letters – but I’m not that guy. So shut up or put up, babe.” 

“Fuck!” I said sharply, finally managing to pry myself out of his grip. “Do you even _listen_ to yourself when you say shit like that?” 

He merely raised an eyebrow, which made me want to punch the smirk off his face immediately. 

“Either you want me or you don’t, Jay, but if you do, you gotta treat me like an actual person rather than a way to get your dick sucked. ‘Cause I’m not that girl, and I’m not gonna let you treat me like I’m worthless.” 

He sighed, once again moving to rub his hand over my shoulder in comforting circles. 

“Jade,” he said. “This is just…I can’t be serious about a girl. Not right now, okay? I can’t do this; not with all this shit going on. We can have fun together, but that’s where it stops.” 

And, trust me when I say that I had a momentary lapse of judgment when I said, “Alright.” 

At least the boundaries were clear now – and it wasn’t like I was in love with him or something. No, Jorel was just this really hot guy, and if he miraculously wanted to sleep with me, why deprive him of that wish? Even if he pulled a fuck-n-run the second I would put out, at least we would have fun, right? 

He seemed about as surprised that I had said yes as I felt, therefore I decided to take matters into my own hands and initiate a kiss. It wasn’t quite like the last one, not as rushed and angry and bruising, but nevertheless quite pleasant. 

We kissed for a while, up until I heard George knock on the door and ask if I wanted to go out for breakfast. 

I pointedly slipped through a crack, opening the door as little as possible as I slunk over to the bathroom to brush my teeth. 

“Jay’s not here, he probably went home with a girl,” said George. 

Good. 

So he hadn’t noticed. 

We went to a small diner, Jorel coming to meet us later and telling a lame story about how he had hit on a girl at a bar yesterday and went home with her, and me throwing him one questioning look after another. 

Until I received a text. 

‘ _act like u normally would_ ’

And another one. 

‘ _ur bro will notice something is off if we dont fight_ ’ 

And another one. 

‘ _ill make it up 2 u later ;)_ ’

I rolled my eyes at the phone (Jorel texted like a preteen), prompting a questioning gaze from George, which I answered by telling him some bullshit story about how Amy had just sent me a funny picture of a dog in a hat. Thinking about Amy immediately made my heart swell up with guilt, but I pushed the feeling down almost violently. No time to think about it now. 

After about twenty minutes, Matt, Dylan and Jordon had rolled up while Aron had, once again, made up some excuse about not being able to be there – I had the feeling that he was doing these things simply to avoid having to act civil around me. 

The waitresses quickly developed a burning hatred for the group gathered around our table seeing as we had an uncanny tendency to yell at each other, make suggestive gestures (involving a few salt shakers – please don’t ask; let me just say that Jordon had an impressively immature mind for a guy who was, in fact, twenty-one years old) and do other things that were commonly frowned upon in busy, family-friendly diners. Their dislike escalated when Dylan suddenly decided it would be a good idea to try to chat up one of the waitresses and she, being the bad sport she was (according to Dylan, but I swatted his arm and told him to respect the lady if she didn’t want to date him), felt harassed and we were politely (polite in a quite abrasive way) asked to pay our bill and _leave_. The order not to _ever_ come back was only implied. 

We were laughing even as we walked out of the door while Dylan looked more confused than ever. 

“What did I do?” he asked. 

“What the fuck, man, you hit on the lady even though she was wearing an engagement ring,” George pointed out. “I’m so sorry, Jade.” 

I simply laughed. 

“Girl’s my best friend, Georgy, she better be used to this,” said Dylan, shoving my shoulder in an affectionate gesture. 

I smiled brightly, noting that he had called me his best friend, which surely was something no woman in the world had ever heard from him. 

“We all know what that means.” We all turned at the bitter sound of Jorel’s voice. He gave both me and Dylan a sour look. “What?” he intoned, causing me to smile once more, albeit a little confusedly. “Means he’s fucking her.” 

“He doesn’t understand the idea of a platonic relationship existing between a man and a woman,” I said meanly, “It’s okay.” 

George threw Jorel an irritable look when he thought I was not looking, Jorel replied with a disinterested shrug and, when no one was staring at the two of us anymore, he smiled at me sheepishly. A silent apology. I rolled my eyes. 

“Anyway, Dyl, I think you need to rethink your flirting strategies,” I told my – warmth enveloped my heart – _best friend_. “She certainly didn’t seem particularly dazzled by your charms.” 

He stuck his tongue out, giving an immature grunt. “She wanted me; just couldn’t say anything in front of the diner. Would’ve been weird getting it on right there, huh?” 

“If that tastes better going down,” I agreed with a laugh. 

“Keep your hands off my sister,” said George, voice gruff and slightly warning. I patted his shoulder lightly. 

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t want to touch Dylan’s D with a ten-foot pole,” I said, mockingly raising my hand to form a tunnel with my hand to act as if I was whispering while still being loud enough for everyone to overhear – even Matt, who had his sidekick out and was vigorously typing out a text; presumably to some girl he was trying to get with. 

“Hey!” Dylan exclaimed, while the others broke out in ridiculously braying laughter. Even Jorel, who had been fake-scowling during the entire meal, couldn’t help cracking a slight smile. I counted that as a win and started patting Dylan’s shoulder gently, giving him large puppy eyes and a pouty smile. 

We walked down Sunset for a while, in a straight line; the width of six people taking up almost the entire sidewalk. However, it didn’t appear to be a problem as most people cleared the way for us automatically, stepping aside to make room for the group of intimidating tattoo-covered guys (and their little sister). 

Again, I felt like I truly belonged where I was. Dylan had forgiven me and was now walking with his arm draped across my shoulder (Jorel was throwing the occasional dirty look and I suddenly got the feeling that, when he was trying to make a relationship last longer than the time it would take him to climax, he appeared quite territorial) while George would sometimes take my hand, squeezing it and giving me soft smiles. 

We finally reached the beach, where George immediately started complaining about having to walk back to the diner later to get his car and Jordon shut him up by offering to drive him there as his car wasn’t parked that far away. 

It was the perfect Sunday afternoon, spent lying in the sun and talking lightly, our laughter carrying above the sound of waves crashing into the shore. The other visitors of the beach, similarly to the waitresses at the diner, took an instant dislike to our little group and started giving us dirty looks for being noisy about a half hour after we had arrived – but I could not have cared less. 

California was no longer a prison to me. It was slowly but surely turning into a home. Dylan was talking animatedly, telling a story about another girl and making livid hand gestures, while I sat back laughing, my head resting on my brother’s shoulder. 

However, when Jorel smiled at me across the group, careful to avoid the others’ gazes I suddenly realized in a moment of utter clarity: 

This was going to be a problem.


	17. Save Me from My Self(Destruction)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is taken from "Boy Division" by MCR

It didn’t turn to shit immediately. 

Jorel and I definitely were somewhat of a match made in heaven, even if no one could know what we were doing. We soon found out that my brother was, in fact, blind and deaf when no one was there to tell him to watch and listen, and therefore we had nothing to worry about when it came to being careless and having slip-ups about our relationship. 

No one, save for Dylan, knew what was going on. I had originally planned not to tell him (Jorel had basically begged me not to) but after about three days, I had caved and called him, spilling all the gory details and asking him not to tell anyone what was going on. Begrudgingly, he had agreed, but not without warning me for the umpteenth time to be careful around Jorel – that I was not the only one who was going to get hurt if things went awry. Jorel did not, however, know that Dylan knew, which made everything just that much more complicated. 

But now that things were set up and we suddenly knew exactly what to do – at least within the borders of our odd relationship – everything went as smoothly as in a crappy Katherine Heigl comedy. We met at night, making out furiously below the covers, sneaking kisses whenever George was not looking, spending beautiful nights getting lost in each other’s bodies, never close enough but always wishing to be further away at the same time.   
We were truly happy together – not the Disney kind of happiness, mind you, but at least the rugged, odd kind of happiness one can only experience in the beautiful Los Angeles. 

Like that one Sunday afternoon when my brother had decided to go out with a girl and Jorel and I went out for a walk. 

He was the one who had suggested it and to this date, I do not know why he had. Because all through fucking me into the mattress of his room when no one was home and giving sloppy head when he wanted to feel self-satisfied and confident, he had made a point of never sticking around longer than it would take for him to ejaculate. 

Sure, it made me feel just a little cheap and it always went down with a slightly bitter taste (no pun intended), but I had forced myself to believe that this was the way grown-ups handled things like this. Besides, it wasn’t like I had any feelings for Jorel or anything. 

So, anyway. We had gone for a walk, his hand loosely draped over my shoulder (which was stupid and reckless considering the neighbors could have seen) and his eyes not leaving mine, not even for a second, which made walking a nigh unsurmountable challenge. 

We had been talking quietly, with hushed voices, about things that had happened this week – his Mom announcing her engagement to another man who was most definitely not his Dad, my Grandma calling and asking me what was going on in Los Angeles, everything we could possibly talk about without having to open up to each other in the slightest – until suddenly, we stopped. I didn’t know why we had stopped or why Jorel was suddenly jerking his hand away like he had been stung or scalded, but I soon realized that it was because a petite blond girl was walking toward us, her hips swaying in a way that only the hips of a girl who knew how hot she was could sway. Her hair was marked with spliss, a testament of the abuse of dying it from dirty blond to platinum blond, and her mascara was slightly smeared. 

She was hot, really. I tried not to judge all that much as she walked up to us, her eyes large and glazed with a glint I recognized as condescending and slightly evil. 

“Going for little kids now, Jay?” she asked. Her voice was high-pitched, nasal and all other kinds of unpleasant. “Never thought you’d stoop that low.” 

“That’s not my girlfriend,” he said automatically, causing a burst of white-hot rage to shoot through my brain – and then I remembered that I was not, in fact, his girlfriend. 

“Still goin’ for the single-use sluts, then?” she continued taunting him. Ugh, what a horrible person – I’d never quite understood it when women spoke so badly of other women, solely because they thought them to be promiscuous. It was really kind of uselessly mean. 

Regardless of my problems with her obvious sexism, it was at this point that I felt compelled to step in. 

“Babe, can we go? You know what you been promising Kirstie and me,” I said with a wink. 

“Oh, really? Whoring yourself around?” asked the girl. 

“Well,” replied Jorel, having miraculously regained his composure at the sound of my voice, “What are you doing these days? Still cheating and lying to get attention?” He chuckled evilly. It was wrong of me to find that sexy, right? 

“Y’know,” I said, “From what she’s wearing, I’m sure she’s on a mission. Shouldn’t be holding you back much longer, right?” I cracked an evil smile, slinging my arm around Jorel like he was my hero. “She’ll be needing a place to stay the night.” I felt effectively ridiculous trying to imitate a Californian drawl, but visibly, it was working. The girl looked mildly offended, and I pulled hard on Jorel’s hand to get him away from there.

He didn’t recover right away, spent a full five minutes staring off into distance as we walked back up Sunset. 

“That was Jenna,” he said, and suddenly, everything made sense – her condescending behavior, his rigid comportment. If I had known, I would have probably slapped the bitch. Not because I cared about Jorel that much, of course, but because it was just a shit thing to do to cheat on one’s boyfriend with none other than said boyfriend’s best friend. 

We were silent for a while; until he spoke up once more. 

“Thanks,” he said, and I smiled lightly, even though I rather felt like puking. 

“No problem, really.” 

No more words were exchanged as we made our way up to the apartment, his hand still clamped around mine, nails digging into my wrist. Sitting down on the couch lazily, I finally mustered up the courage to look at him (his ears). 

“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked lamely. 

Jorel laughed, but there was no real amusement behind it, simply exhaustion. Maybe a little congealed aggression. “Why do you?” 

‘ _Because_ ,’ I didn’t say, ‘ _you look like you’re about to slit your wrists with the shards of a broken beer bottle_.’ 

“No reason,” I did say, shrugging my shoulders like an idiot. 

More silence followed, until Jorel smiled, bumping my shoulder with his. 

“I wrote some lyrics for the demo, wanna see ‘em?” 

I nodded wordlessly, only because I didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t think about how fuck buddies don’t show each other their lyrics, don’t hold hands, don’t go for walks. I really didn’t. 

Jorel handed me a sheet of paper, messy words scrawled on top. 

I read through them carefully (mainly because Jorel’s handwriting was about as legible as a five-year-old’s) and then read them again. And again. 

There was no title to hold on to, simply lines upon lines scribbled across the page. What I could make out, however, told a tale of pain, of utter desperation. 

“ _I look alive, I’m dead inside, my heart has holes and black blood flows_?” I said questioningly, trying to lighten the mood with a smile. “Jesus, Jay, overdramatic much?” 

He luckily took it the right way and laughed, yet again playfully bumping my shoulders with his. “Ever heard of the phrase ‘tortured artist’?” 

“ _And just because you showed no love and hate on us, you fucked our trust_ ,” I continued, “ _Now watch me stick this knife called lust into my chest until it bust_.” I grimaced. “’Stick this knife’?” 

“You have a problem, Ragan?” asked Jorel, raising his eyebrows. 

“The word’s not right,” I replied, shaking my head slightly. As I was roaming my mind for possible replacements of the word ‘stick’, he had taken to placing soft kisses to the side of my neck. 

“I know!” I exclaimed suddenly, “ _Thrust_.” 

The expression on his face suddenly turned smug as he pressed closer. 

“ _Thrust_?” 

“ _Thrust_.”

“Alright,” he said, and the bedroom door slammed shut behind us.

-

Jorel was, as I now knew, a rough, desperate lover. And I’m not talking about sex either, he was just…He was repressed, and an asshole, to say it simply. Every emotion that he had went into this void inside of him, where he tried to shove it down as deep as possible, only letting things resurface when he was alone. However, sometimes he couldn’t control himself. 

Like that one Wednesday afternoon when I had come home early, thanks to my gym teacher having broken her leg horseback riding. 

I returned to find Jorel sitting on the couch, eyes empty and staring straight ahead, with an empty 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor on the floor and a bit of white, powdery dust on the coffee table, spread all over a CD cover with a driver’s license card next to it. 

“Shit,” I exhaled, immediately dropping my bag and bolting over to the couch, where Jorel was now looking around; disoriented, his eyes tried to find mine, to investigate the strange new presence in the room, but nothing would help. 

“Jay,” I said, placing my left hand on his right and moving closer, my other hand softly patting his cheek. “Jay,” I repeated. 

That was when he finally came to, his eyes blinking lazily as they focused on my face. 

“Jay,” I said again, less panicked and more exhausted this time. 

“’ey,” he replied. His voice was slurred. “’m ‘kay.” 

I rubbed my hand over my face, exhaling sharply while weighing the chances of getting him to a hospital against having him sober up on the couch. 

“Is that coke, Jay?” I asked, pointing to the remnants of the white powder, idling there on the case of a ‘Best of The Who’ compilation. 

He didn’t reply for a long time. It wasn’t coke. Oh my God, what if this wasn’t coke? What if it was worse? The ‘drug harmfulness’ scale from my Health class immediately sprung to my mind (you know, the one that suggests that crack cocaine is less harmful than alcohol – which actually makes me more uncomfortable than anything) and I went through a list of drugs that can be snorted. Shit –

“Special K,” said Jorel, giving me a lazy smile. “Don’t think ‘s kickin’ in though.” 

Ketamine. 

He had taken fucking _ketamine_. 

_Fucking horse tranquilizers_. 

I almost laughed at that; short and humorless – but I thought better of it, shutting myself up and finally managing to look him in the eyes.

“I think it is,” I replied instead of laughing. 

“Did you only drink that one forty?” I asked then, because I couldn’t think of anything better to do. 

Jorel slurred something unintelligible, causing me to shoot up and immediately reach for my phone. 

“That’s it, I’m calling an ambulance.” 

“No!” he suddenly exclaimed, sudden lucidity drawing through his eyes. “Please don’t.” 

He slumped on the couch, curling up near one of the armrests. I was in an impossible position in that moment – to call anyway, and risk having Jorel hate me afterwards, or not to call and possibly let him die? 

“’m fine,” he added as an afterthought. 

I ran both hands through my hair exasperatedly, looking down at him desperately. Like looking at this empty, broken shell of a man could make me feel any better. 

“’m sorry,” he said suddenly. 

Tears were prickling behind my eyes, and before I knew it, they were spilling over, burning down my cheeks and leaving angry red marks. 

“What for?” I asked tiredly. Maybe this would keep him awake at least. 

“For not bein’ a good boyfrien’.” His eyes were reddened and bloodshot as he looked up at me. Smears of white were still lining his philtrum and nostrils; and I couldn’t look. I retrieved a tissue from the box I kept in the bathroom and walked over to wipe the remnants of ketamine from his face. 

“You’re not my boyfriend,” I said finally, even though the words physically hurt me. 

“But I wanna be,” he replied quietly. And that was when I knew that he was truly off his face. 

“Shit, Jay,” I said, tears now running down my face like waterfalls. “You don’t even fucking know what you’re saying.” 

“I do.” His voice was suddenly oddly clear when he talked, for only the fraction of a moment. “I know that I love you, and I know that you love me, and I’m sorry.” 

He passed out. 

I spent seconds upon seconds contemplating whether to call an ambulance or not. Slapping his cheeks and even getting George’s laptop out, pinching the neighbor’s wifi to google the effects of ketamine, I luckily found out that only few had ever died of overdoses. 

In another burst of panic, I picked up the phone and called Dylan, who simply sighed. 

“Ketamine? Really?” 

I let out an incredulous, hysterical laugh. 

“That’s _all_ you have to say?” I asked, voice slipping off into heights that most human beings would probably not be able to hear – thankfully however, Dylan’s sense of hearing was quite musical. “Jay is fucking _passed out_ on fucking _horse tranquilizers_ and that is all you have to say?” To be fair, I was in a quite emotional state at that point, so I consider it relatively understandable that I snapped at Dylan like that, even though he had not done anything wrong. 

“Calm your tits, Jade,” he said. “Is he breathing?” 

I stepped closer, felt Jorel’s breath fan across my face. “Yes.” 

“Well, then.” 

I gulped. There was a lump in my throat, and it was probably the size of a fucking brick. 

“Look, Jade.” Oh, boy. I could practically taste the condescending lecture about how ‘this is how we handle problems in Los Angeles, babe’. 

Seriously? 

Fuck. This. 

“I know this is gonna sound patronizing as fuck – which it’s not supposed to be – but Jay’s a grown-ass man. He’s gonna make his own decisions, and they’re gonna be stupid as fuck. But you can’t do shit about it, and that’s that. If it makes it any better, he had a Special K phase when he was seventeen too, and he turned out okay?” 

I plopped down on the couch next to Jorel’s passed out form and rubbed the hand that wasn’t holding the phone over my face. The comment that people who claim they have turned out okay were usually far from okay was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it down. 

“Yeah,” I said, finally. 

“Babe,” a voice on the other end of the line said suddenly, all high-pitched and breathy. “You coming back to bed?” 

I laughed in spite of myself. “You have a girl over, on a fucking Wednesday at three in the afternoon? What even are you, Dylan?” 

He returned the laugh, seemingly glad that I had calmed down, at least to an extent. “Fuckin’ shit-hot, that’s what I am, babe.” 

“Don’t call me ‘babe’ when you have a woman lying naked and ready, like, two feet away. You’re a dog.” I did my best to sound disgusted, or even disgruntled, but it came out more exhausted than anything. 

“Alright. Put your boyfriend to bed, will you? George’ll probably flip shit if he finds him high again. Didn’t take it that well last time, y’know?” 

“Yeah.” Then, as an afterthought, I added, “Bye, Dylan.” 

“Love you.” 

And the line went dead. 

Leaving me with a still very much passed-out Jorel next to me. 

“I should get a fucking award for this,” I muttered as I picked myself up and lowered my hand to shake Jorel awake. It was hard, but he finally opened his eyes, blinking drowsily. 

“Come on,” I said, “let’s get you to bed.” 

Sober Jorel likely would have interpreted that as a cue to shower me with innuendo-laced comments, talking about how he would only go if I went, too, preferably unclothed – but high Jorel simply nodded, letting himself be dragged off into his room. And let me tell you one thing here: That bastard was heavier than he looked. All those hours spent working out and thinking no one would notice had surely paid off as he was now looking quite ripped, what with huge arms and all that jazz. I had a kink in my neck by the time we reached the door, and another in my upper back when I had finally gotten him to lie down and close his eyes. 

When I went to leave the room, however, a very, very small voice from the bed said, “Stay?” 

As I turned around, I swear, the sight I was faced with caused me to come as close to having a broken heart as I had ever felt, in eighteen years of living: Jorel was lying curled up, his eyes empty and hollow and just so inexplicably _sad_ that I would have probably died of guilty conscience if I had not walked back and tucked him in like a child. 

His arms went around me in an instant and I found myself being pulled down to rest alongside him. 

As he slowly drifted off into unconsciousness again, I had enough time to reflect upon my choices. 

Did he really love me? Or was that just a drug-induced thought he had simply felt no urge to conceal? Or was this all some sick joke? 

And, even worse, did I really love him? Was this unnatural craving for physical and emotional proximity to him just a side-effect of the (admittedly insanely good) sex or was I truly, really in love? I had always thought that I had been in love with Val – but now I was not so sure anymore. 

Everything I felt around Jorel was somehow connected to him. If he was happy, so was I; if he was sad, so was I. If he was not paying any attention to me, I would either try to kiss him or, if other people were present, pick a fight with him. Just so that he would notice me. 

There was no point in denying, actually, that I was in love with him.

It felt good to finally admit it, if only to myself. 

I was in love with Jorel Decker. 

Who would have thought that I would ever even _think_ that? 

I suddenly wondered whether I had liked – fuck, _loved_ – him from the beginning. Even when we had presumably hated each other, all we had done was try to get the other’s attention, be it through disgusting innuendos (on Jorel’s side) or passive-aggressive comments (on my side). Come to think of it, this tempestuous romance had been foreshadowed from the very second we had met eyes for the first time. 

For the umpteenth time, I wondered how idiotic my brother had be not to notice all of this – shit, George.

Hectically, I untangled myself from a sleeping Jorel and practically lunged for the door. Quickly, I wiped off the CD cover with a wet cloth, throwing it somewhere on the kitchen counter as I had no idea where it actually belonged. The empty forty was discarded into the trashcan as well, and I gave the apartment a hasty once-over to check whether Jorel had left another visible trace of his…endeavors. 

When I didn’t find anything, I ripped open the window, letting warm Los Angeles air filter into the room while Jorel slept. 

I sat on the sofa for a long time, letting the gusts of warm wind ruffle my hair and pull at my clothes.


	18. I Can't Live with Myself (So Stay with Me Tonight)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from "Don't Go" by Bring Me the Horizon feat. LIGHTS

But it wasn’t always this life-or-death with Jorel, believe me. Like that one time on a Monday evening, when George was out with Jordon and Aron, the little bitch, talking about some bar gig they were preparing for. Jorel and I were sitting on the couch – okay, we were not sitting. Lying, maybe. Slouching? 

Whatever.

What was not ‘whatever’, though, was Jorel’s…expert tongue, and the noises I was letting out. 

“Jesus Christ,” he intoned, after we had both finished (him quite messily, may I add), “The neighbors are gonna ask me if George and I are gay.” He sounded truly regretful. “Again.”

I laughed breathlessly. “They’ve asked you before?” 

“Yeah,” he said. “It was kind of embarrassing. Not the part where they thought we were gay, but the part where they asked me who’s the girl in our relationship.” He shuddered, probably only to make a point. 

“Well,” I said, a playful pout on my lips. “I hope it’s not true, ‘cause I don’t like to share.” 

He smirked down at me, tightening his grip around my back. “You don’t have to, babe – I’m all yours.” 

We made out lazily for a while, tongues tangling and hands roaming, but we later declared ourselves too tired to start anything right now. 

“I gotta do some Calc homework, shit,” I said, despite still not making any move whatsoever to roll off of Jorel’s broad chest. 

“Fuck school,” he said. 

I smiled, albeit a little tightly. “Yeah, sure. That’s a good idea, I’ll throw away my future.” 

“Well, I never graduated, and I turned out okay.” 

“The ‘I turned out okay’ point is usually only brought up by people who did not, in fact, turn out okay,” I informed him. My voice was strained and angry, knowing that we had had this argument before: Jorel was always quite…liberal when it came to schoolwork, whereas I was focused on staying on top of my work and procrastinating as little as possible. If anything, I wanted to graduate with good grades so that I would be able to get into a decent college – a college with scholarship programs, of course. Money don’t grow on trees. 

“You trying to tell me something, sweetheart?” he asked, sounding challenging and maybe a little bit mocking. _God_ , I hated it when he did that. And I mean really hated it. 

“Nope,” I replied, and damn if I didn’t sound like the queen of passive aggressive then. 

“Oh, right, I forgot, I’m not as good as you ‘cause I didn’t go to fucking college,” he snarled. His expression was nasty as he broke away from me, sitting up on the couch and stubbornly directing his gaze straight ahead. 

“I never fucking _said that_ ,” I replied. 

“Yeah, but you thought it.” 

He seemingly took a big breath, pulling masses of air into his lungs as he scooted even further away. 

“You know what? Doesn’t matter,” he said. His expression was twisted into a careful mask of indifference, no trace of the former anger. 

“What do you mean it doesn’t –” 

“I mean,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.” 

“Where is this sudden transcendental state of relaxation coming from?” I asked, tone nasty and words laced with ugly sarcasm. 

“It doesn’t matter ‘cause I don’t give a fuck what you think, babe,” he intoned, schooling his face into his trademark smirk – the one I had grown to hate the second I had met him. “’Sides,” he went on, “It’s not like we’re a couple, right?” 

Right.

-

There was a certain kind of thrill in making out with Jorel in the living room while knowing that George could come in at any second. That, and only that, was why we were rutting against each other like horny teenagers now; no other reason. 

Luckily for us, the lock was a little moody and it took a ritual of key-jiggling and howling at the moon to be able to shoulder the door open, so that gave us enough time to break away and make ourselves look presentable, switching on the TV in the process until George burst in, a tall, blond form in tow. 

“What’s up?” he greeted, completely oblivious to my bewilderedness. 

“Hi,” I replied, although it came out sounding like a question rather than a statement. 

“What are you guys up to?” he asked, even though it was blatantly obvious what we were, and had been, up to. 

“Your sister is being a bitch, as usual,” said Jorel. I suppressed a smile, knowing what heavier insults would entail the second that George left us alone. 

The guy behind George let out a short, honking laugh – the fact that he had, unlike George, not failed to realize what was really going on between Jorel and me was hanging in the air awkwardly – and I deemed him worthy of my best death-glare. He nodded his head as a promise not to say anything, and I went back to smiling. 

“Oh!” exclaimed George, seemingly just now having remembered the presence of the other guy. He was tall, almost intimidatingly so, with tangled dirty blond hair that was shaved off on one side, and a silver ring protruding from his lower lip. “That’s Connor.” He pointed at the guy, giving a crooked smile. 

I raised my eyebrows. “Hi?” I repeated. 

“Connor, this is my sister Jade, and you already know Jay.” 

An unspoken question hung above us like the weight of the world. 

“Connor is a guitarist,” George continued. “He’s looking for a band.” 

His eyebrows were wiggling in the dorkiest way imaginable, positively making me laugh. 

“Subtle,” I said and got off the couch. “Let’s go for coffee,” I said to Connor, slipping into my shoes. 

“Slut,” said Jorel, badly covering it up with a cough. I rolled my eyes at him and left, Connor trailing behind me awkwardly. 

However, when we left the apartment building, we were definitely no longer at a loss for words. 

“So,” he started, “How long have you and Jay been fucking?” 

I laughed. “It’s impressive that you managed to figure it out in three seconds flat, yet George still doesn’t even think we like each other.” 

He joined my laughter. “Well, George is selectively deaf and blind. Anyway, what kind of music do you like?” 

And the rest is history.

-

“You’re not gonna replace me, are you?” asked Dylan, his voice whiny and childish over the phone. 

I rolled my eyes, despite knowing that he would not be able to see it. Our communication was good enough, however, that he could probably sense my eye-rolling by now. 

“With Connor?” I chuckled brightly. “No way. You’re the only one for me, King Kong.” 

There was a good-natured sigh on the other end of the line. “Don’t call me that. Anyway, you gonna be famous now? Forget about your boys in the hood?” 

“Dude,” I replied, laughter now unstoppable, “we don’t even have a drummer. Shit, we don’t even know what music we want to make.” 

“But you know you’re gonna make music,” he stated. 

“Yeah.” 

I went to say something else, but the door slammed open gracelessly and revealed a positively fuming Jorel, complete with a beer in his hand and an otherworldly angry expression on his face. 

“Dylan, I gotta go,” I said quickly. 

“Sure, love ya,” said Dylan. 

“Love you too.” 

As soon as the phone hit the mattress, Jorel slammed his beer down on the dresser beside the door. I could already feel the fight starting to form between us – although I had tried my best to avoid him since I had gotten home from my conversation with Connor. Connor, who had the best taste in music, almost exclusively agreeing with me on everything. Connor, who was probably the most asexual individual in the world and so, so, so not my type – but Jorel, of course, believed that anyone with a penis between their legs was my type. I found myself getting slightly angry as well, simply at the thought of being yelled at because Jorel was an insecure piece of shit that couldn’t differentiate between a platonic relationship and a sexy one. 

“Why are you doing this to me, Jade?” he asked. He sounded sad rather than angry, and I braced myself for another heavy fight that would likely leave me wanting to get as black-out-drunk as Jorel but being unable to due to my brother playing watchdog. 

This was almost and everyday-occurrence with Jorel, to be honest – both he and I had fuses shorter than any tempestuous couple in a romantic comedy combined and clashed on almost every subject. Rather than putting me off, it drew me even closer to him, as dumb as it sounds. I somehow found myself liking the passion, the temper. Sure, most of the time it was a little tiring to fight, always fight, but when I thought about whether I wanted to have a partner like Matt (whom his friends had actually unofficially dubbed a ‘pussy snake’, which, you know, is pretty unambiguous), who would agree with me on anything simply to get in my pants, I figured I was definitely better off this way. 

“I’m not doing anything, Jay,” I replied tiredly, running a hand through my hair. It was not looking all that great today, I would probably need to wash it – but showering had proven difficult when there were two other guys living with me, one of whom was my brother who still had not wrapped his head around the fact that I was, actually, a grown-ass woman now, the other of whom had a tendency to jump my bones whenever we were alone together. 

“You are,” he said, speech slurred and eyes dark. 

“I’m in love with you, and you keep going out with Dylan and Connor and everyone else but me.” 

Jorel’s drunken schizophrenia was something I had yet to get quite used to. He had a tendency to confess his undying love for me when wasted off his face and not remember anything about having done so when he would awake from another one of his drunken stupors. I honestly could say that I fucking _hated_ it, as, ever since I had come to terms with my steadily growing feelings for him, I had started wishing for it to be actually true. Which it wasn’t – I wasn’t going to try and fool myself. 

“Go to bed, Jay, you’re shitfaced,” I said tiredly, getting up from the bed and taking a reluctant step toward him to shove him out the door. 

He was having none of it, though, and started coming closer, invading my personal space and placing his hands on my cheeks with a bit of difficulty. 

I didn’t know how much longer I would be able to take this. 

“No,” he insisted.

His lips were on mine in an instant, and I didn’t even make a move to push him off at this point. What would it prove, anyway? It would just piss him off more, and there was really no need for that. 

He crowded closer, backing me up against the bed, all while running his hands across my cheeks and neck, feeling my slightly sweaty skin. Sometime, someplace, I would have enjoyed it when he was doing that, but today was not the time and here was not the place. Therefore, I stilled beneath him, letting him have his way but not actively participating as he parted my lips with his tongue, invading me further. 

At some point, however, it seemed to dawn upon him that I was not responding to his touches and that was what really made him angry.

“Why don’t you love me, Jade?” he asked. 

My heart contracted, every breath turning into a fiery burst of pain. Everything in my chest felt like it had closed up, swollen up. Like there was no longer any room for air inside my body. Like everything was suddenly drained of life, of energy. 

As I looked up at him, the man I truly loved, I folded into myself even more, shocked at the hollow look in his eyes. 

“If you really loved me, Jay,” I said, “you would stop self-destructing so carelessly.” 

His drunken mind couldn’t process that, and he got angry, pressing closer and closer until I turned my face away, disgusted at the alcoholic breath fanning across my face. 

“Please don’t leave me,” he said finally. 

It was a dumb thing to say, because I was positively pinned underneath him. 

But I smiled nonetheless, my eyes sad as I finally raised my hand to stroke my thumb across his cheek. 

“I won’t.” 

That seemed to calm him down enough so that he could curl up next to me, body pressed up against mine. We fell asleep like that, me chewing the inside of my cheek and him content with how he had perfectly acted way drunker than he had actually been – ready to hold me to my promise.


	19. The End of What We Planned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from "Fer Sure" by the Medic Droid (I know, please don't say anything)

Dylan’s birthday came and went, and now he was finally twenty, talking about all the great things he was going to do. Move out, get an apartment, tell his father to go fuck himself, get his mother to divorce said father, get the band to blow up – and none of us actually believed him, but everyone pretended for the sake of keeping the birthday boy happy. 

Connor and I had been full-time searching the streets of Los Angeles for a drummer, finally coming to the conclusion that it was hopeless, until he stumbled upon Alex in a record store near his apartment. Alex turned out to be a senior at high school, very much like myself, and an avid reader of comic books as well as an even more avid drummer. We started practicing in Alex’s basement – much to the delight of his absolutely boring parents (they were the kind of people that kept pictures of their children from every single school year and hung them above the chimney, even though the space above the chimney was limited as fuck and anyway, who the _fuck_ needs a chimney in California) – twice a week, writing songs and recording demos like madmen. Connor, as I found out, had actually been in a band before, much like myself, and we often found ourselves having deep conversations after practice about how our former bandmates had simply failed to understand our artistic credibility. 

Jorel, much to my surprise, had started sobering up a little, only getting drunk on one to two nights a week. He was cutting down on everything, not even having coffee in the morning anymore, until at some point, he announced proudly that he was quitting cold turkey, having cut off all his ties to alcoholic beverages and now only drinking coke and water. 

“I’ll start again at some point,” he said, “but I’m not gonna risk the band’s future by being a dumb drunk-ass.” 

So that was that. 

We were furiously fucking at every single chance that we got, and before I knew it, it was the end of April and graduation was nearing in the fastest pace imaginable. 

Between meeting Dylan at the diner, band practice, watching movies with my brother and sleeping with Jorel, everything suddenly turned into a maniacal blur. 

Only one day stood out, and it changed the next months drastically. 

Marshmallows were spread out on the coffee table, popcorn was heating up in the microwave and the _Shaun of the Dead_ DVD was spinning in the DVD player. My feet were draped across the sofa, over Dylan’s lap, and his hands were tracing patterns on my calves. 

I should have known something was up when Jorel entered the room at around eight PM, leaving straightaway. I didn’t think too much of it, though. I had gotten stupidly careless in the last month due to Jorel’s abstinence of alcohol, and therefore I had simply not expected things to go down like that. 

But right now, everything was fun and games. 

We had moved on to the actual _Dawn of the Dead_ , and Dylan was musing that maybe, they should have called it _Day of the Dead_ because there was never any actual mention of the dawn, and I shut him up by placing my palm on his mouth. 

“When watching a movie, it is usually advised to be _quiet_ , Dyl,” I reminded him. 

He, of course, did what everyone would have done and bit my hand. Not softly either. Therefore, it was no surprise when I let out a sharp yelp of pain, almost punching him square in the jaw. 

“Did you just _bite_ me, Alvarez?” I asked incredulously. 

He didn’t reply, simply reached out to tickle me, hands sliding up and down my sides. To anyone who knew what was going on, it was quite possibly a very innocent scene; just two friends sitting on the sofa, watching a movie and generally having a good time – but Jorel didn’t know the context. Therefore, when he walked in, there was a considerable amount of shock written all over his face. 

Me, however, being the careless idiot that I was, I simply laughed again, squeaking when Dylan pushed me off him. 

“What the fuck?” asked Jorel. There was the slur I had grown so accustomed to – I had not heard it in a long time, and I’d almost missed it. But I didn’t miss it, and immediately straightened my back. 

“He was tickling me,” I said. 

“Sure he was,” Jorel snorted. He was rolling his eyes, which had a negative impact on his sense of balance and almost knocked him off his feet. I repressed the urge to be smug about it. 

“Yeah, he was,” I snapped. 

Dylan had pulled himself to his feet and was now awkwardly hovering by the couch. There was a pained expression on his face as he started slowly making his way over to the door. 

He didn’t open it yet. I threw him a desperate look, grateful that he wasn’t leaving me alone in a situation like this. He knew how Jorel could get when he was drunk – and this was probably not going to end well, judging by the look on his face. 

“He was! We were watching a fucking movie, Jay, and I told him to shut up and when he wouldn’t I put my hand over his mouth and he bit me, and then we just wrestled a little.” 

“’Wrestled a little’,” Jorel parroted. “’Cause tha’s what you do in a plato…platon…pla…” 

“Platonic relationship?” 

He nodded. 

“Look at you,” I said, barely putting up any effort to conceal the resentment in my words. “Not even able to pronounce the word ‘platonic’ and you’re trying to fight me.” 

“I ain’t fightin’…” 

I sighed, plopping back down on the couch. 

“She’s mine,” said Jorel to Dylan. 

My nostrils flared. 

“I ain’t anyone’s, Jay,” I replied. 

When I looked up, I saw that Dylan was standing dangerously close to Jorel, whose hands were balled into fists at his sides. “She’s her own, and you need to respect that if you love her.” 

Jorel laughed, short and cruel. “Who th’fuck are you to tell me sumthin’ ‘bout love, huh?” He was swaying slightly. “And what th’fuck, did you tell ‘im that we’re in love, Jade?” 

He looked at me, hurt and confused and so, so angry. 

“Yes,” I replied. 

“I tol’ you not to tell anyone!” 

“I’m her best friend,” said Dylan sharply. I had honestly never seen him this serious. Dylan, the laid-back stoner guy, getting snappy with Jorel – what was even happening here? “She needs at least one person to talk to who’ll treat her right.” 

The next moments passed in both a lightning-speed-induced blur and ultimate slow motion. 

Jorel’s hand shot up, drew back and – 

Hit Dylan directly in the face. 

For a moment, the three of us simply stood there, unmoving. None of us said a word as Dylan reached up to prod at his nose, seeing if anything was broken. Still, he was silent as he turned away, grabbed his jacket and started making for the door. 

“Sorry, Jade,” he said simply, “I’d recommend coming with me”, and then he left. 

Five seconds of utterly destructive silence filled the room. I didn’t follow Dylan. 

Jorel was still swaying, not fully in control of his body, and then he started muttering nonsensical things to himself as he stared, not quite speaking but not quite keeping completely quiet. It took me an embarrassingly long time to think of the words I said next. 

“ _What the unholy fuck is wrong with you_?” I snarled. I was appalled at how vicious I sounded. I looked Jorel in the eye (which I didn’t do a lot, I remembered distantly) and took a threatened step back, the backs of my knees hitting the coffee table. 

“Jade,” he started, but I silenced him with a simple shake of my head. 

“Don’t you dare come near me again.” 

And then I, too, stormed out of the room, slamming the door shut and running after Dylan. 

That was the last time that Jorel and I spoke for months.


	20. Tell Me It's Okay (to Be Happy Now)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is taken from "Tell Me It's Okay" by Paramore

“Big day, huh?” 

I snickered, looking up at my brother. He looked ridiculous in a shirt and a tie. 

“That a tear in your eye, Georgie?” I mocked. 

He flipped me off, drawing a few quite odd looks from the parents scattered around us. I gave them a various assortment of dirty looks, until George ruffled my hair, pointing out that he had taught me well. 

“Hey,” I said, trying to straighten my hair back down, “that shit took two hours.” 

“Ah, don’t worry, babe,” said Dylan from my right, “Your hair’ll be ruined once you get to Mike’s place tonight anyways.” He winked at me, causing me to scowl and swat his arm. 

“Quit thinking with only your dick, Alvarez. Some of us have needs other than sex.” 

Another group of parents turned around to glare at us, and Dylan grinned at them brightly until they turned away, disgusted. 

“This is where we say goodbye,” I said dramatically, halting in front of a row of seats. Jordon, Matt and Connor were already seated, waving and smiling like idiots. More parents turned and glared, and I wondered whether the guys had placed bets on who could piss off more snobs. There was a drop in my stomach as I scanned the little group for the one person I was really, really hoping to see, all while not wanting to see them at all – but it was a false alarm. Jorel was not there, despite the awkward invitation I had handed him the week prior. He had somehow buried himself in even more drinking, barely even coming home to shower on his way to the next party – and as expected, his mother had not done anything to stop it. Simply giving him money to get shitfaced even more. He had lost his job for turning up drunk on more than one occasion, and was now living off forties, molly and ketamine. 

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t wish for him to come back every single day. 

“Alright,” Dylan said, giving me a rather stiff pat on the shoulder (a little too stiff for my bones, if you ask me) and left, but not without pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I’m proud of you, babe!” he exclaimed before walking over to the others, making sure to step on as many toes as possible. What a dick. 

“So, this is it,” said George, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “My little sis all grown up.” 

There was a sad edge to his smile as he pressed a clumsy kiss to my forehead. When I had spent two weeks lounging in the living room and eating nothing but cereal due to a reason he still did not know, we had suddenly gotten a lot better at the whole ‘casual physical contact’ thing. He had finally come to terms with the fact that his tiny little sister was not as tiny anymore, and I had come to terms with the constant smell of stale smoke surrounding my older brother. Even more than that – the scent and his rough musician’s hands had begun to feel comforting; a safe haven in a fucked up world. 

The first days after Jorel and I had fallen out had probably been the worst of my life. 

I would always remember brown eyes, so sad, and blue skies, looming above us like they were threatening us with their cheerfulness. I would always remember, and I would regret it forever – but my pride had forbidden me to make the first move. And after a few days, I had no longer wanted to make any move at all. Seeing Jorel the way that he was, empty-eyed and dead inside, I had simply shut off all remaining affection for him. I still longed for his touch, his proximity, his voice – but I was making a point out of not letting it show. I had even started dating Mike to cover it up. 

It was not working. 

“I was grown up before I graduated, you know,” I said a little sourly. “I’m just finally legally allowed to go to college.” 

There was a moment of silence before he said, “Is Jorel the reason why you want to go to Ohio to go to college?” 

I stared at him, open-mouthed and in a way that would have likely been comical to some, but I couldn’t help it. 

“Where’d that come from?” I asked, hysterical laughter dying on its way up my throat. 

“I did the math, Jade,” he said. “You broke down the exact time that he did. I don’t know what happened, but I know he’s drinking himself to death ‘cause of it and you’re moving to the other end of the continent. Which, admittedly, makes me pretty mad. ‘Cause we started talking five months ago, and now you’re already leaving me.” 

I bit my lip to keep it from quivering. My eyes were getting fogged up and glazed, and I did everything I could in order to refrain from crying at that moment – the pictures would turn out horrific. 

“Let’s talk about this later, why don’t we?” My voice was pointedly cheerful and George sighed, hands still resting on my shoulders. 

“I love you, Jade,” he said. He sounded choked up, like he was about to cry as well, and I felt like I would not be able to hold it in much longer. 

“I love you too, big bro,” I replied with a watery smile. “But I have to do this.” 

“Yeah.” 

He pressed one last kiss to my forehead and off I was, walking over to the seat reserved for me by Mike and Amy, my legs wobbly and unsteady.

“You know,” said Amy, while I tried to sit down while not getting my gown all scrunched up, “it’s kinda creepy how close you are with your brother.” 

I sighed, letting Mike press a wet kiss to my cheek. His kisses always felt wrong, like he was always using too much tongue, too little pressure. With Jorel, it had always come naturally – _no, bad Jade_. 

“Don’t listen to her,” he said, and I refrained from rolling my eyes. 

He never argued. Never teased. Never said anything that would ever even remotely have the power to piss me off. 

“Yeah.” 

Just in that moment, the commencement speeches started up. Our valedictorian, a weird, jumpy kid named Brendon Urie, made a tearful speech about remaining friends through thick and thin and always retaining the relationships to our amazing classmates. I felt like chucking my shoes at him. An angry bully (whom I had shared my homeroom class with) named Frank Iero beat me to it, shouting and yelling obscenities, just so that Brendon would overhear but not loud enough to reach the teachers. Brendon looked like he was ready to cry, and I almost wanted to walk over and pick a fight with Iero. 

After getting our diplomas, we did the cliché thing and chucked our hats way up in the air, mine pointedly landing in the hands of none other than Mike himself – I inwardly accused him of manipulating it somehow, with a magnet or something, so that he could have my DNA to clone me at some point of his life. I shuddered at the mental image of Mike living in a basement with five hundred Jade-clones to assist him 24/7. 

Lunch with the guys, luckily, was as awesome as always. Dylan was taking every opportunity to tell everyone in our vicinity that I was officially the smartest of them (only entailing a few protests from my brother, Matt, Connor and Jordon, who had – as well as Dylan – graduated high school, albeit with more colorful grades than me). 

The diner was quite packed when students from other schools started filtering in. This seemed to be somewhat of a hotspot in this area, I noticed. 

George later dropped me off at the graduation party, held at some guy’s house (I think his name was Pete Wentz, a guy with shiny, large teeth and a quite questionable sense of fashion) and made me promise to at least use protection when having sex with Mike, followed by the explanation that he really didn’t want to have any more Mike-like creatures in this world. He had never even tried to conceal his distaste for Mike’s entire existence, which made me wonder whether I should appreciate his honesty or scold him for being an ass. 

The party was already in full swing when I got there, most people wasted off their faces, stumbling and falling on top of each other. I sent a quick text to Amy asking where she was when someone suddenly tapped my shoulder. 

There was an awful twisting feeling in my gut as I turned to look at Mike, who – admittedly – looked quite good in here, his brown hair lighting up with the red and blue lights dancing through the packed living room and his eyes shining with unconcealed desire. 

“Hey,” I said, smiling shyly. 

“’ey,” he replied. 

One thing I had learnt from my ‘relationship’ with Jorel was the uncanny ability to always tell when someone was even slightly intoxicated. Mike, however, was not simply _intoxicated_ – oh no, he was shitfaced. 

About two hours and five screwdrivers later, I was in pretty good form but not drunk enough to do anything I would regret. It was quite nice to hover in this state, to be honest. 

However, around twelve, when the party started getting really crazy, Mike was becoming awfully handsy. He was putting his paws all over me, sliding them under my dress and touching my neck, having his fingers in places where they didn’t belong. 

Finally, I somehow found myself being pushed into a closet – a fucking _closet_ , how cliché is that shit? – and shoved against the wall, Mike’s hands roaming all over my chest, my smooth thighs, my hips. 

Of course, I kind of enjoyed it – Mike was a decent guy, and I liked him, kind of, but if I was completely honest, I didn’t really want him. . 

It somehow felt so wrong; Mike’s smooth hands, the hands of a nerd instead of the hands of a guitar player. I found myself yearning for Jorel’s calloused musician’s fingers rather than the ones worn from playing Halo for long hours. 

It was pathetic, really. 

There was an ugly sound as Mike finally took it too far, trying to pull the zipper of my dress down in a haste and, of course, ripping it out of the fabric. 

“Fuck,” I hissed, hand going back to assess the damage. The slider of the zipper had been torn out completely, leaving nothing but the teeth scraping against my skin. I wasn’t wearing a bra, so I had to hold the edges of the fabric to keep myself from being completely naked in front of Mike – and that was when I decided that I had had enough. 

“Okay, stop it,” I said sharply, pushing out of Mike’s smothering grasp. “Just stop it.” 

He was drunk enough not to know that he had fucked up, but I didn’t care anymore. So while he stood there, not quite understanding what was going on but very likely to remember this in the morning, I finally started talking. 

“Stop fucking touching me, God.” 

He finally pulled away, taking a step back. 

“And of course, he complies, like a fucking puppy dog,” I snarled. I knew I was being unfair, and I knew that I was letting out pent-up emotions, but this was just _it_. I had had enough. Enough of Mike, enough of my constant desire for Jorel, enough of this smothering white-hot anger that had been building up inside of me for the past months. Just _enough_. I had thought I was doing a quite okay job pushing Jorel out of my mind; pretending that I didn’t want him anymore. All this time spent had turned out to be in vain. 

“You know, I hate it when you do that. When you want something, why not fucking fight for it? Why chicken out like a little kid? Why not fucking _fight me_?” 

He understood nothing, therefore I simply pointed toward the door. 

“Get _out_.” 

He seemed to have enough presence of mind to follow simple commands, therefore he walked out without another word. 

That was when shit started hitting the fan. 

I sunk down, back against the wall, eyes scrunched shut and tears running down my face like my eyes were a waterfall that had been impeded by a dam for years and was now finally able to flow again freely. I was not bothering to hold my dress up any longer, simply cried into my hands as I sat there, half-naked and kneeling, shaking and reeling. 

I sat there for a long time, until I was almost positive that I had cried out. 

Then I started rattling my brain for possible solutions – the most plausible one was digging out my phone and starting to dial. 

George, of course, had already turned off his phone. As had Dylan, and Jordon. Fuck, even Matt was not answering. Connor, as I knew, didn’t own a car, and Alex was just as drunk as I was due to his own graduation party somewhere on the other end of town. 

Which left me with one fucking option. 

Terror was floating through my veins. What if he didn’t pick up? What if I had to walk all the way home alone? What if I had to ask Amy, of all people, to call her mother?

Most importantly, however, what if he didn’t pick up? 

What if, what if, what if? 

“Are you drunk-dialing me already?” asked a pissed-off voice. 

I couldn’t help the silent chorus of _hepickeduphepickeduphepickedup-maybehestillcaresaboutme_ that had erupted the second Jorel had picked up the phone. 

“I need your help,” I said. My voice, the traitor, cracked in the middle making it painfully obvious that I had been crying. 

He seemed to perk up at that, and I felt awfully reminded of the night of the Fuckening on Sunset – I contracted at the memory, actual physical pain shooting through my chest. 

“What did you get yourself into now? Mike stuck in your pussy? Need me to dig him out?” 

God, he was _sober_. Jorel was sober, on a night like this. I thanked every God I could think of. 

“I’m…I’m at the graduation party, at some guy’s house, and I just broke up with Mike but he…” 

“He what?” Jorel pressed. 

“My dress ripped when he was trying to get the zipper down,” I pressed through clenched teeth, “I told him to get out.” I strategically left out the part where I had realized that I didn’t want Mike touching me at all, that I would much rather be with Jorel. 

“Text me the address,” said Jorel mechanically. “I’ll be there in ten.” 

He then hung up, no further ado. 

So this was it.

This was what my life had been reduced to. 

Calling my kind-of-ex (whom I had never actually dated), who was coincidentally sober (it was as if he had known that something bad was going to happen – but then again, the chances were slim that he had remembered that it was my graduation night; considering he had thrown the invite away as soon as I had handed it to him), sitting crying and half-naked in a fucking closet at my own graduation party. 

This was low, even for me. 

And my heart ached at even the thought of Jorel. Hearing his voice for the first time in…what, a week? had felt like heaven and hell at the same time. He had sounded calm, collected, _sober_. 

Why had he been sober? Was he quitting cold turkey again? 

I gulped. 

Was he moving on? Was he moving on from me, and that was why he was sober? 

Had he cared less about me than about Jenna, and that was why he had managed to get out of this alive? 

The thought of him moving on, moving away, moving on to someone else was killing me. It filled me with physical pain to the very brim, until every single one of my nerve endings felt like it was on fire. I _loved_ him – why had that never been enough? 

The door suddenly slammed open with a bang, revealing none other than the male in question. He looked awful; bags under his eyes and other signs of long-term drug abuse wearing him thin. Maybe it was the withdrawal; because he could handle being sober now. Because he could handle being alone now. 

He would probably move back in when I was gone, would probably gladly start hooking up with women in the apartment again. Would move in, move on, move away. 

No words were spoken as he quickly unzipped his hoodie, shrugging it off and handing it to me. As if in a daze, I realized that I was probably giving him a good view of my boobs, but, well, nothing he hadn’t seen before. 

There was a short silence while I pulled the article of clothing over my ripped dress, carefully zipping it up to my collarbone. The dress was tight enough that it didn’t slide down, so that way I looked like I was simply wearing an oversize hoodie and a skirt rather than a dress. 

Jorel stared at me for a moment, until he reached out to put his arm around me, pulling me close to his body. He steered me through the crowd of newly graduated students, pulling me toward the front door and right out, too, where he maneuvered me into the car gently. His hands were as calloused, as rough as I remembered them. 

I instantly felt safe. 

He drove in silence for a few seconds, until I couldn’t bear it any longer. 

“How did you know that I was in the closet?” I asked. 

He didn’t laugh at the unintentional pun, simply shrugged, not taking his eyes off the road. “Ran into Mike on my way in.” 

There was blood on his knuckles. I didn’t want to know what body part of him had run into Mike first. 

“It was gross,” I said. 

When Jorel raised his eyebrows – still stubbornly staring straight ahead, for fuck’s sake, since when did Jorel give a single fuck about safety when driving – I clarified. “When Mike touched me, it was gross.” A moment of silence. “I hate it when he touches me.” 

He snorted. “Should’ve thought that through before you let him fuck you.” 

I smiled sadly. “We never fucked,” I said. Why the hell were we talking about this? “I told him that I was a virgin and wanted to wait.” 

That prompted a full-on laugh from Jorel, and it almost sounded genuine. 

“That, babe, you are certainly not.” The pet name came naturally and didn’t feel weird at all – which made it all the more concerning. 

We quieted down again. It was ridiculous – we had not spoken in just over two months, and now we were bickering like we had never stopped talking. Like we had never stopped sneaking kisses and giving each other sloppy head when George was asleep. 

The rest of the drive was silent. I was in physical pain from having to simply watch him, being unable to reach out and touch, and Jorel was firm and angry. He didn’t want to talk, so we didn’t. 

He unlocked the apartment door for me, his presence warm against my back as he steered me inside, pushing me over to the couch. 

“You should sleep,” he said, and it almost sounded gentle. “You’ll feel better tomorrow.” 

I smiled, and I wanted to tell him that no, I would not feel better, because I was leaving tomorrow, leaving for New Jersey. Leaving to spend the summer with Grandma until I would go to Ohio and go to college, even though I wanted nothing more than to stay in Los Angeles and stay with him and stay with my band. 

But he didn’t know that I was leaving so early – he knew that I was going to Ohio, but he didn’t know that I was going to Jersey – and I didn’t want to tell him. Not now, not when his voice was gentle and his hands were soft on my shoulders.

“Thanks, Jay,” I said finally. 

He even gave me somewhat of a smile. 

“I’m sober now, you know?” he said. “Cleaned up my act. I’ll probably move back in full time with you two soon.” He sounded so controlled, so even that I almost blew up in his face right then and there. Where was the angry Jorel? Why was he not yelling at me, telling me that I had been stupid to even start dating Mike? 

_Because he doesn’t care._

_Because that’s what happens when you move on, you stop caring._

“Awesome,” I said, instead of all the things that had sprung to my mind. 

We went to bed separately, and I did not sleep a wink that night, tossing and turning, the ghosts of Mike’s touches still lingering on my skin.


	21. Departures

When George came in to wake me at eight AM to remind me that my flight was leaving in four hours, I had dark bags under my eyes and my jaw was set angrily. The sunlight seeping through the windows (still no curtains) was bleary and meek; it slipped into the room like a child that knew it wasn’t supposed to be there. 

“How was the party?” he asked. 

“Awesome,” I said. The last thing I had said before going to bed, the first thing I had said after getting up. ‘Awesome’ was starting to become my least favorite word. 

My suitcases were heavy. 

I refrained from knocking on the door to Jorel’s room and telling him that I was leaving, refrained from making a scene out of an impromptu-goodbye. Simply walked down the stairs, George carrying my suitcases, Matt carrying his phone, Dylan carrying a frown and Jordon carrying a lot of dumb jokes. 

“Can’t believe she’s leaving us already,” said Dylan, patting my hair mockingly. 

I flipped him the bird. 

There were three new messages on my phone. 

It was hard to tell which one made my heart burst into shards more.

Mike, Sat, 1:01: ‘ _whr u_ ’ 

Amy, Sat, 1:24: ‘ _u saod u hatd jorl. i hate u_.’ 

Mike, Sat, 8:43: ‘ _i’m sorry about yesterday. i think it’s safe to assume we’re not a couple anymore, though. anyway, have a safe trip. and good luck with jorel. you’ll need it_.’

“Jade?” asked someone next to me. I looked up to find Dylan staring down at me, his large hands on either side of my face, not quite touching, just hovering. 

I soon realized why he was staring. Tears were trickling down my face, leaving angry red marks all over my cheeks.   
“It’s okay,” I croaked, “Let’s just go.” 

I looked at the dingy apartment building one last time before the car jerked into motion, Jordon giving me a thoughtful look in the rearview mirror. This was it. The last time I would see this apartment in a long, long time. The last time I would sit in the car squished between Jordon, Dylan, Matt and George in a long, long time. The last time I would have the chance to talk to Jorel, forever. 

However, we didn’t get very far. 

“Shit,” said Dylan. 

“What is it?” 

“I need to go back to the apartment,” he announced, earning a collective groan from all of us. “Just let me out here, I’ll walk back. It’s important.” 

“You’re not coming to the airport?” I asked. My voice was cracking again, how embarrassing. 

“I’ll come, I promise,” said Dylan, brushing his knuckles over my cheek. “I just really need to do this.”   
He gave Jordon a meaningful look and we pulled over, Dylan practically leaping out of the vehicle as soon as it had stopped moving. 

“I’ll be there, I promise!” he yelled, and off we were again. 

The rest of the drive was silent, almost pressing. It was painful to even think about what was going to happen now. 

_Don’t be stupid_. 

What would happen is that I would get on a plane to the airport of Newark, where Grandma would already be waiting for me with a big smile and the promise of freshly baked cookies. I would go to college, get a respectable job, do something with my life. 

And I would not, and I repeat, _I would not_ waste my time thinking about Jorel fucking Decker while doing so. 

We silently carried my two huge suitcases over to the check-in, where a bored lady in her mid-forties told me that ‘it’ll cost me extra’, to which I so rudely replied something along the lines of ‘I know, that’s why I’m waving my grandmother’s credit card here’. She begrudgingly handed me my boarding pass, which I haphazardly stuffed into my handbag along with my passport, where both disappeared into the chaos of headphones and books thrown together. 

Then came the moment of truth. 

We walked over to the gate, still in abashed silence. 

“This is it,” I said, and I would have been lying if I said that I wasn’t about to cry painful tears. 

“This is it,” George repeated. He looked down at me with big, sad eyes, brow furrowed. 

I went to hug Matt first, because I felt that he would be the least affected by my forthcoming departure, but when I pulled away, there was a positively wet stain on my shoulder. 

“You go make us proud in college, yah?” he said. His voice was even raspier than usually; and I swear to God, this was the first time that he had talked addressing me directly. I bit back a sob. 

Next was Jordon, who patted my back a little roughly. He looked at me, red-faced and scowling, and I couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out of my mouth. 

“Don’t whip out your dick too much, yah?” I said, giving him a watery smile. 

“A heartbreaking goodbye?” a voice behind us mocked, “Without me?” 

I turned around to see Connor standing there, leaning against Alex, who seemed to have quite a hard time supporting himself along with the older boy’s weight, at least judging from his exhausted expression and rigid posture. But that could just be the post-graduation hangover wearing him thin.

“I’ll miss you guys,” I told them, hugging each of the two. 

“We’ll miss you too,” Connor replied, sounding fake-disgruntled. Large sunglasses were perched on the edge of his nose, suggesting that he had had quite the fun time during the night before. “Fuckin’ giving me hope of starting another band and then leaving for fuckin’ college. I mean, _college_? That’s so 2002.” He couldn’t help the small grin sneaking onto his face, but it was still incredibly, incredibly sad and I couldn’t help but feel like there was something not-at-all humorous about his anger. 

The last goodbye, however, was directed at George. 

He had been standing a little away from the group all throughout this scene, hands covering his face. It looked a little ridiculous, all the tattoos adorning his neck but then he was bawling his eyes out. 

I stepped closer, enveloped in the smoke-scented warmth of his arms. 

“I will miss you so, so much,” I muttered into his chest. I couldn’t help the sob slipping out of my mouth. 

Who would have thought that after just five months of being there, of living in the worst part of Hollywood, after sharing an apartment with a neurotic drug-addict and my idiotically oblivious brother, I would be sad to go? 

“You don’t have to go,” George said desperately. “Please don’t go, you just arrived.” 

Everything hurt, my entire body was on fire with pain as I buried myself deeper, inhaling one last breath of his smell. 

“I have to,” I said, and stepped back. And I knew that I did. If I didn’t go now, I would never move on from Jorel. I would never be able to date, to be in love, to do something other than this. 

“I guess there’s no point in waiting for Dylan, then,” I said, desperately turning my head and looking around. 

“ _Boarding for flight 419 to Newark airport starts now_.”

“That’s me.” 

I looked around, staring at five pairs of eyes, two of which were openly crying, three of which were repressing it. 

“I just wanted to thank you guys one last time.” I gulped, trying to ease the lump in my throat. “You…you made me feel at home in a place I didn’t want to be at, a city I didn’t want to live in, a family I didn’t want to be part of. And I swear, I will come back, just…not in the near future.” 

I looked at their faces, some red and angry, some deathly white and exhausted. None of them made another move to stop me, they all simply stared at the ground in front of their feet. 

And as my family stood in defeat, I closed my eyes, more tears spilling over and down my throat. 

My t-shirt was now completely tear-stained – absolutely ruined, the thing – and I felt like I had just been run over by a bus. This was the time to go. 

“So thanks, guys. Thanks for giving me a home. I love you all so much, and I will miss you like crazy.” 

“We love you, too,” a few of them muttered. 

Connor looked away, seemingly thinking about something. 

“I think it’s safe to say that we all want to kill Jay right now,” he said, and that was the last thing I heard before the airport employee ushered me into the line. 

Connor looked angry, like he was about to say something else, but all noise was drowned out. He was definitely more pissed than sad that I was leaving; and I was unsure whether he was mad at me or someone else. 

I walked on as if in a dream, my eyes half-closed as tears flowed freely like there was no tomorrow. I was moving. Moving on. Moving away. 

Just like Jorel was. 

I was about to start a new life in a place that I had once thought to be my home, but now no longer was quite sure about. Did I really want to go back to New Jersey? Did I really want to go to fucking _Ohio_ of all places to get my college degree, in Comparative Literature of all majors?   
For the first time in my life, I truly felt like I understood Sylvia Plath when she said that being insane felt like being trapped in a bell jar. I truly understood what it felt like to be detached from reality like this, marching on with a visible goal in mind but no mind in the goal. There was nothing waiting for me where I was about to go. I had chosen Ohio because it was the furthest away from my home; because it was the furthest away from Jorel that I could get. 

But what was I going to do when I got there?

Find a new guy? 

Be disappointed, the same way that I was disappointed when Mike touched me and there was no emotion behind me eyes other than disgust; disapproval for his grubby hands? 

Finally realize that I was never going to get over Jorel because I loved him – I truly, truly loved him, no matter how much I wanted to tell myself that I didn’t care; that he had simply been a way to keep my mind off the deaths of my father. 

It was all rendered useless now, though. 

All these thoughts, all the endless nights of considering and reconsidering; nothing would ever help now. My chance with Jorel was blown, and now was the time to move on, move away. 

Find another place I could call my home.


	22. Arrivals

There was a curtain of tears clouding my vision. I probably wasn’t walking in a straight line but instead stumbling forward as if drunk – but I didn’t care. All I cared about was moving forward as quickly as possible to cut off this awful feeling of abandonment. But my feet were noncompliant; they seemed to be pushing me back even though my mind was telling them to go forward. I was leaving against my body’s better judgement, but I simply had to. 

Everything seemed muffled as I approached the metal detector, getting ready to take off my belt when suddenly, a scream rang through the invisible barricade between me and the rest of the world. 

“Jade!” 

I whirled around, and sure enough, there he was. 

Dylan, leaning against the railing, his arms outstretched as if he was trying to reach out for me. _He was_ , I thought, and I suddenly clicked back into reality. The wall fell, nothing parting me any more from the outside world. Noise and commotion burst into my ears, colors bloomed in front of my eyes and smells exploded in my nose. 

Fuck Ohio. 

Seriously, fuck Ohio. 

How in the world could I ever think that I would be able to run away? To leave all these people behind? 

As I stared at my brother’s perplexed face, my best friend’s awaiting arms, I realized that there was just no way. 

No way I could leave. 

Why? 

Because I saw _him_. 

Jorel, next to Dylan. He was doing his best to look annoyed, but the look on his face said something else entirely. 

I suddenly started moving again, shoving my way through the crowd and toward the end of the line. 

“Miss,” said one of the airport attendants, catching me by the wrist, “You cannot go back here.”

“Fucking watch me,” I hissed, tearing out of his grasp and hopping over the barrier, shoving right into Dylan’s arms. 

“That’s what you had to go back to the apartment for?” I asked. 

He didn’t say anything, simply grinned, pulling me closer, closer, so much closer. 

“Jade,” said a gravely voice next to us. 

I gulped, wedging my way out of Dylan’s grasp. 

And what happened next, I think none of us (save for Dylan, the asshole) expected. 

Jorel basically launched himself at me, catching my jaw with his rough musician’s hands and pulling me into a kiss – a kiss that was probably our most bruising one yet. 

“Wha-” I choked out when we took a short break to come up for air, but he immediately shoved his lips on top of mine again, pushing closer, closer, closer. 

“Don’t go,” he said. 

Suddenly, I was back in Jorel’s room, and he was there, lying on his back. Drunk, asking me not to leave him alone. 

“Don’t go,” he had said. 

Except he wasn’t drunk this time. 

Except he wasn’t high, didn’t need the comfort of chemicals to express his feelings. 

“I won’t,” I had said. 

“I won’t,” I said now. 

We kissed again, and again, and again, and explosion of colors and tastes and feelings and everything else around us. 

Until someone cleared their throat. 

“We’re going to have to inform you that you have missed your flight, Miss,” said one of the employees. “Your luggage will be forwarded to you.” 

I simply laughed, and then Jorel and I were kissing again. 

“I thought you’d moved on,” I said, pushing closer and closer and closer until our bodies were no longer apart, until we were no longer two separate people, simply two puzzle pieces, fitting together like we were meant to be. 

“I didn’t.” 

“But you,” I choked out. My voice was shaking with suppressed sobs. “But you’re suddenly sober.” 

Jorel smiled a watery smile, burying his hand in my hair and pushing me away a little so he could rest his forehead against mine. In that moment, George and Jordon and Connor and Alex and Matt and Dylan didn’t exist. It was just the two of us. 

“I’m sober,” he said, “because I decided to fight for something for the first time in my life.” 

I gulped. 

“I’m sober,” he continued, “because you don’t deserve a guy like that; you deserve so much better.” 

He stroked his thumb over my cheek. 

“I’m sober because I love you.” 

“You love me even when you’re sober?” I asked him. 

My tears of utter desperation had turned into tears of joy somewhere in the middle of this mess; and I was crying like a baby. 

“I love you even more when I’m sober.” 

“I hate to interrupt this absolutely heartbreaking public display of affection,” Dylan’s amused voice cut in, “but can we take this to a pizza place or something? ‘Cause I’m starving.” 

“And you just sounded fucking disgusting as shit,” added Jordon. 

Jorel and I snapped out of our little world, looking at Jordon, who was grinning dumbly. 

“Dude, you hurt my little sis and I’ll set your dick on fire,” he said. 

“I’ll call Grandma,” George told me, with an absolutely blissful smile on his face. Like an idiot, he laughed, staring at his sister, at me, the person he hadn’t seen for nine years but regained as his best friend in just a few months. 

And when we sat in the car, Jorel’s arms around me, I truly felt that I had made the right decision. Home was home, after all. 

“Don’t go,” he repeated, resting his forehead on my cheek. 

“I won’t.”


	23. Epilogue: Everywhere I Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finally out there! The whole thing! I hope that the few people who do read this story find some enjoyment in it! Thank you so much for caring about this story and coming back to it years and years later, that really means a lot. I hope you all have a wonderful day, or night, or whatever time it is. 
> 
> Love,   
> M

I still can’t quite believe that you ditched college for _this_ ,” said Jordon, curling his upper lip into a mocking smile. “I mean, your boyfriend is practically a brainless ape, and your best friend’s only quest in life is to get his dick wet as many times as possible.” 

He earned himself a sharp jab in the ribs from Dylan and a lazy flip-off from Jorel. 

“As opposed to you, a known seeker of true, pure love,” I replied dryly.

“And,” Jordon went on, as if nothing had happened, “not to forget the band that constantly makes fun of you for having an ass the size of Texas.” 

This earned him a rather harsh punch on the shoulder from Jorel. 

“Say something like that to my girlfriend again and I will _end_ you.” 

Jordon laughed, eyes twinkling as he subtly side-stepped out of Jorel’s reach. 

Subsequently, he bumped into George, who was on his third coffee just that morning, still tired from yesterday’s gig, and simply made an ugly grunting noise. There was an awkward moment when everyone (except Matt, who, once again, had his phone out and was texting someone) stared at him, until he narrowed his eyes and said, “What?” which caused everyone to look away quickly. 

My phone beeped with an incoming text message – a lyric that Connor and I had been playing with for the past few weeks. Our set was finally coming together, and with a look at today’s date, I suddenly realized that it was about a week until the first show. 

Time was a crazy thing in Hollywood. 

Now that I was thinking about it, I also remembered that it was Jorel and my one-month anniversary next week. And that Grandma had asked to meet him. 

I was torn out of my thoughts quickly, however. 

“So how’s being sober, Jay?” Jordon asked meanly. 

Jorel shrugged. “Pretty funny, ‘cause now I can watch you making a total ass out of yourself every time you get drunk.” 

“Hey, I just like to whip out my dick!” Jordon exclaimed, as if that was the most normal thing in the world. “I should totally write a song about that.” 

“Yeah,” I replied, rolling my eyes fondly, “that’d sure be one of your biggest hits.” 

Jordon stuck his tongue out at me. “No, but seriously, no drugs, no booze, no nothing?” 

Jorel laughed at that. 

“Love’s a drug,” he said, his eyes finally smiling along with his mouth. “And I’m an addict.” 

I returned his smile. “Absolutely hooked,” I agreed. “The only habit I don’t want you to kick.” 

“You guys are fuckin’ disgusting,” exclaimed Dylan from his spot on the sofa. 

“Stop eye-fucking my little sister, Decker,” snapped George. 

“Who’s eye-fucking whom?” asked Matt, finally looking up from his phone. 

“Your mom is eye-fucking me!” yelled Jordon. 

“Fuck my life,” said Jorel. 

“That would be cheating,” said Dylan. 

I smiled contently as I looked around my little gang, their laughs ringing loudly through the streets of Hollywood.   
Honestly – Los Angeles had turned out to be…not that bad, actually. Not exactly what I expected; in a good way, of course. 

I had come a long way to finally be able to say this; but everything had somehow turned out just fine. I had found my family, my home, my love, my everything. Though the real party, the real me, the real home; that’s everywhere I go, as long as these guys are with me.


End file.
